
Class _U^^2M. 



Book 



i^ 



Copyright N° 

COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT, 



MORAL TRAINING 
IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS 

THE CALIFORNIA PRIZE ESSAYS 



BY 



CHARLES EDWARD RUGH • T. P. STEVENSON 

EDWIN DILLER STARBUCK • FRANK 

CRAMER • GEORGE E. MYERS 



GINN & COMPANY 

BOSTON • NEW YORK ' CHICAGO • LONDON 



[urtri^RY of congress] 
I wo Cooles RdCelved ^ 

AUG «? 190? 

COPY Q. 



VK*^ 



Copyright, 1907 
By GINN & COMPANY 



ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 



77.8 



GINN & COMPANY. PRO- 
PRIETORS . BOSTON . U.S.A. 



PREFACE 

A citizen of California, who modestly withholds his name, 
recently offered a prize of five hundred dollars for the best 
essay on *' Moral Training in the Public Schools," and a 
second prize of three hundred dollars for the next best 
essay. 

This offer was widely published in the educational, the 
religious, and the daily papers of the country, and over 
three hundred essays, many of them of high merit, were 
submitted. 

The donor of the prize fund named as judges Rev. 
Charles R. Brown of Oakland, California, Dr. David Starr 
Jordan, President of Stanford University, and Professor 
Fletcher B. Dresslar of the Department of Education in 
the University of California. 

The first prize was awarded to Mr. Charles Edward 
Rugh, Principal of the Bay School, Oakland, California, 
the second prize to Rev. T. P. Stevenson of Philadelphia, 
Pennsylvania. 

The three essays which stood next in rank according to 
the estimate of the committee, — submitted by Professor 
Edwin Diller Starbuck of the University of Iowa, Frank 
Cramer of Palo Alto, California, and Principal George E. 
Myers of the McKinley Manual Training School, Wash- 
ington, D.C., — were possessed of so much value, and made 
such important contributions to the discussion of this vital 

iii 



MORAL TRAINING 

problem, that it seemed desirable to secure them for 
publication in the same volume which contained the two 
prize essays. Arrangements have accordingly been made 
with the writers so that the three other essays are here 
presented, the five essays constituting a useful volume 
for all who feel an interest in the moral output of our 
public-school system. 

It is hoped that this book may be read not only by 
those directly engaged in educational work but by parents, 
citizens, clergymen, and others who recognize the serious- 
ness of the problems here discussed. 

The clear, popular style in which the essays are written, 
and the able manner in which the varied solutions are 
offered, make the volume most readable and profitable. 

CHARLES R. BROWN 
Committee of Judges \ DAVID STARR JORDAN 

FLETCHER B. DRESSLAR 



IV 



CONTENTS 

Page 

I. Charles Edward Rugh . . . . . .3 

II. T. P. Stevenson 53 

III. Edwin Diller Starbuck 89 

IV. Frank Cramer 122 

V. George E. Myers 163 



MORAL TRAINING IN THE 
PUBLIC SCHOOLS 



I 

THE doctrine of evolution has given us a new mental 
framework on which to construct our view of life and 
the world. According to this view the form and content 
of life is determined by the responses which the organism 
makes to its environment. Human organisms and environ- 
ments have developed to such a state of complexity that it 
is impossible to respond to all the forms of stimulation and 
suggestion. Choice is possible and necessary. Intelligent 
moral choice is the method by which a conscious being 
preserves its life and integrity. This method of life requires 
standards and means for measuring the values of things, 
situations, reactions, and ideals. 

Evolution describes the method of development of both 
individuals and institutions as '' successive differentiation 
and integration." The division of labor, the separation of 
church and state, and the consequent changes thus brought 
about in the standards of values have thrust upon us new 
and grave problems of social integrations. The discovery 
of America, the Copernican theory, and the inventions 
and discoveries of science under the inspiration and guid- 
ance of the doctrine of evolution have transferred men's 
thought and interest from the supernatural to the natural. 
The king, the Bible, and the pope have been representa- 
tives of the supernatural order and have ruled by divine 
right. Under this new natural order the Bible, the church, 
and the state get their sanction and authority from their 

[3] 



MORAL TRAINING 

service rather than from a power supposed to He without 
them. The Bible is examined by the canons of Hterary, 
philosophic, and scientific criticism, and must stand the 
experimental test of trial. The clergy must appeal to 
man's sense of his place in the moral order. The laws 
of the democratic state derive their authority from the 
consent of the governed. The division of labor and the 
modern reorganization of industries have socially separated 
the employer from the employee, the producer from the 
consumer, the workman and workwoman from the home ; 
therefore intimate personal association in these common 
interests of life is no more possible. The result is a 
divided responsibihty and a '* stratified conscience." Many 
a business man has one conscience or moral ideal for his 
home and church, another for his club, and quite another 
for the '* company and its business." (Historically "the 
church was the mother of schools." By support and con- 
trol the state is now the father. Both demand the moral 
training of the child. Their separation has raised the 
question of the ways and means of moral training. The 
church stoutly maintains that there is no sound morality 
without religious sanction, and that the Bible is the safest 
text for the rules of faith and practice. Material progress 
and the spirit of democracy have raised the state into the 
place of supreme power. In the name of liberty our 
democratic state has excluded sectarian instruction from 
the public schools, and has prescribed courses of study 
made up of the so-called *' secular " branches. This new 
order has not produced moral progress commensurate with 
the intellectual achievement and the advancement in tech- 
nical skill The decreasing percentage of illiteracy, the 

4 



IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS 

increase of literature, and the marvelous achievements in 
science are unmistakable evidences of intellectual progress. 
The applications of science to the arts of life and the cor- 
responding output of the machines of industry are positive 
proofs of progress in mechanical skill. The boldest opti- 
mist is disappointed when he looks for the correlative 
signs of moral growth^ Indeed, criminologists, and even 
some publicists, are pointing to signs of moral decline in 
each of the historic institutions. The increasing number 
of divorces, the increasing number of dependent children, 
along with the increasing club life of men and women, are 
cited as examples of the decUne of the moral sense of 
responsibihty for the home. The alarming increase in the 
number of suicides and murders indicates a dechne in the 
safety of human life and in the feeling of its sacredness. 
The increase of robbery and commitments for crime against 
property reveals either a pressing poverty or a growing 
greed. The increased expenditure for intoxicating bever- 
ages, and for tobacco, coffee, and candy, indicates the grow- 
ing power of desire for mere stimulation of the nervous 
system. The methods of the Standard Oil and the insur- 
ance companies suggest that large corporations have no 
thought for the rights of the individual. Not a few men 
admit, and some boldly declare, that it is impossible to be 
honest and succeed in business. They say that there is no 
place in business for the Golden Rule. Many good people 
look with sorrow, shame, and fear upon the lack of civic 
honesty in municipal and national politics. The press 
declares and the pulpit admits that the church, the bulwark 
of morality, has dechned in its power over the conduct and 
lives of men. Concerning moraUty in the public schools, 

5 



MORAL TRAINING 

Dr. Harris, former United States Commissioner of Educa- 
tion, says : " There is no topic concerning which the sug- 
gestions made are more idle and unprofitable." 

These social changes have had more effect upon the life 
of the child than upon any other member of society. 
Under the old order the children cooperated with the 
parents in producing and consuming the necessities of life. 

/This stress and strain of common necessity provided the 
natural and social atmosphere for the development of the 
sense of individual and joint ownership, and the sense of 
moral values. The children had their share in the social 
events of home, society, and church. The older members 
of society provided the examples for imitation and the 
occasions for emulation in industry, society, and morals. 

/ Under the new order, gradation, separation, even isolation, 
has taken the place of cooperation. The child is removed 
from first-hand contact with Mother Nature. He gets his 
berries from a basket instead of from a bush, and his milk 
from a can instead of from a cow. The child is removed 
from first-hand contact with the productive industries. The 
factories and corporations have broken up the old-time 
home. Things used in the home are now made behind doors 
marked '' Positively no admittance." The child is excluded 
from the social events of the club and often from those of 
the home. In school and church the child is '' graded," that 
is, set apart on the basis of age, size, and appearance. Each 
child of a family may be in a different room, under a differ- 
ent teacher, and with different playmates. His social copies 
are of his own age and class. He takes his moral standards 
from his compeers. The machines of industry and the 
labor organizations have limited the number of apprentices. 

6 



IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS 

In many cases the father is prohibited from taking his 
own son as an apprentice. All this has resulted in an en- 
forced idleness of boys and girls outside of school hours. 
In the school hours the subjects and methods suggest the 
professions more than the trades. The schools emphasize 
scholarship rather -than work and service. Knowledge of 
subject-matter is rapidly increasing ; the opportunities for 
immediate application of this knowledge to useful labor are 
decreasing. This cramming of the mind with verbal, formal 
material, without putting it constantly to the test of trial, 
results in a kind of mental dry rot, which shows itself in 
intellectual and moral confusion, and inefficiency in life 
situations. The old social bonds are dissolving. The child 
is thrown into a very maelstrom of new and conflicting 
sights, sounds, situations, and temptations without adequate 
preparation to meet them. New methods of advertising 
and distributing goods afford many more occasions for 
lying and stealing than did the old home and farm. 

''New occasions teach new duties." These radical changes 
in the social order, so greatly affecting the child, demand a 
correlation and integration of the moral forces, and a reorgan- 
ization of the school upon a more social, and hence con- 
sciously ethical, basis. The school must take on more and 
more the form of the workshop and more and more the form 
of a social center. 

This problem of moral training cannot be thrust back 
upon the home and church. They must do their part ; but 
the whole child plays, learns, and lives, at home and away 
from home ; and the whole child comes to school. The 
teacher must grasp the whole situation in order to do her 
part. She may have only a working hypothesis as to what 

7 



MORAL TRAINING 

to do ; but she must work her hypothesis for its full worth. 
This is the only method of testing it. Those who beUeve 
in formal moral training, those who believe in incidental 
moral training, those who believe in religious training, all 
may go on giving reasons for their belief ; but the time has 
come when all must show their faith by works and results. 
Means and methods of moral training. The churches 
hold to the religious sanctions for morality, and demand 
the use of the Bible in education. They have prepared the 
three plans which follow : 

1. Let churches agree upon a common creed concern- 
ing God, duty, and immortality, and found moral training 
upon such a creed. 

2. Separate the pupils into classes according to secta- 
rian affiliations, and turn them over to their own clergymen 
or teachers. The high authority of Germany is quoted in 
support of this plan. 

3. Let each sect build its own schools and draw upon 
public funds in proportion to the number of children under 
instruction. 

These sectarian plans are inconsistent with the spirit of 
modern democracy. 

The school of the Society of Ethical Culture of New 
York City has undertaken to exemplify unsectarian moral 
instruction. FeHx Adler, the leader, expresses the theory of 
this solution as follows : ** It is the business of the moral 
instructor in the public school to deliver to his pupil [note 
the mechanical view of the child still present] the subject- 
matter of moraUty, but not to deal with the sanctions of 
it ; to give to his pupils a clear understanding of what is 
right and what is wrong, but not to enter into the question 

8 



IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS 

why the right should be done and the wrong avoided. . . . 
The conscience can be enUghtened, strengthened, guided, 
and all this can be done without once raising the question 
why it is wrong to do what is forbidden." 

Mr. Adler has collected and carefully graded a number 
of fairy tales, stories, and maxims, as material for moral 
training. This simplifies the whole problem by omitting 
the sanctions or reasons for conduct. This solution is 
correct and safe for boys or girls who cannot or do not 
ask "Why,?" But most American boys and girls do ask 
*' Why ? " and a refusal to satisfy this craving of the rational 
soul raises the suspicion whether there be good reasons for 
doing what is required. 

The present is pregnant with promise. Those who 
object to the use of the Bible and religious instruction 
in public schools have just the situation they desire, and 
the burden is upon them to provide other means of moral 
training and to prove their adequacy. 

The believers in the Bible and the Christian religion of 
course accept their central doctrines : (i) the Kingdom of 
Heaven is within the children of the kingdom, and (2) that 
the personal Hf e is the most efficient means of propagating 
this kingdom. Excluding the Bible and rehgious instruc- 
tion from the schools does not exclude them from the life 
of the teacher. Next to the inherent seeds of moraUty and 
religion in each child, the character of the teacher is the 
most important factor in moral training in the school. It 
is significant that the two greatest moral teachers of the 
ages, Socrates and Jesus, left no formal book of instruction, 
but reUed upon their Hves and the effect of their lives upon 
their disciples, as the means of propagating their teaching. 

9 



MORAL TRAINING 

Constitutions and legislatures have no objection to this 
living morality. 

For the present, constitutional limitations and state 
laws have determined the practice of the teacher in regard 
to the formal presentation of the Bible and religious in- 
struction in many pubUc schools. The Hebrew race and 
the Bible have been the two mightiest forces in the moral 
uplift of mankind, and until the teacher is as free to use 
the inspiring and instructive literature of the Bible as she is 
to use the Iliad and the Koran and the poetry of the other 
races, we are limiting the teacher in the use of efficient 
means of moral training, and therefore this is not a closed 
question ; but teachers need not suspend moral training 
until this question is settled. The Bible is only one of 
the means. The problem of the hour is how to make the 
present situation and the means now within our reach yield 
the largest possible returns. 

EdtLcatio7ial solution. Education, morality, and religion, 
in fact all human development, have their roots and life 
principles in the instincts and impulses of the individual. 
The child must be thought of as a living soul. As such it 
is active in its own characteristic way. The child's self, 
its nervous and muscular systems, are already so fashioned 
that without previous training it promptly and definitely 
responds to certain necessary situations. These instinctive 
reactions and their consequences are reported in conscious- 
ness as pleasurable or painful, so that the act and end get 
meaning and value. The meaning of the act is organized 
into the memory by persistence and repetition until it 
becomes an idea. This idea in memory, along with the 
consciousness of its absence in reality, or its conflicts with 

lO 



IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS 

others, causes a tension between the idea and its reaUzation. 
The imagination seizes the idea with the intent and pur- 
pose of making it real, and behold ! the idea has become 
an ideal and the act is moral. The moral agent knows what 
he is about, is interested in his act, and makes it express 
his will. The absence of a known end and a conflict of de- 
sires cause tensions between the real and the ideal. These 
tensions require '' worth judgements " and moral choice. 
These conflicts arise by the rapid ripening of instincts and 
impulses, and the feeling of the need of reaching a work- 
ing conclusion. Instincts are classified as individuaHstic, 
reproductive, and social. The egoistic instincts preserve 
the individual ; the reproductive instincts preserve the spe- 
cies ; the social instincts integrate, make one, the individual 
and the rest of the species. Out of these instincts and the 
conditions requisite for their normal discharge arise the 
moral agent and the moral situations. James names the fol- 
lowing instincts on which the school must build: ''fear, 
love, curiosity, imitation, emulation, ambition, ownership, 
constructiveness." 

Moral development consists in bringing these *' native 
reactions " to higher levels by making them conscious, by 
bringing them under control, and by bringing them into 
right relation to each other, — i.e. organizing them into a 
moral character. This is done by arresting those too 
strong, strengthening those too weak, and making them 
fortify each other. 

It is easy to get intellectual assent to the proposition 
that the aim of education is the formation of character. 
Disagreement arises when we analyze character into its 
elements and undertake to prescribe ways and means for 

II 



MORAL TRAINING 

its development. These difficulties arise because character 
is viewed from the standpoint of its products rather than 
from the point of view of its nature and inner workings. 
Instincts are predispositions to particular reactions that 
arise from the very physiological and psychological con- 
struction of the self. They are racial habits perpetuated 
by heredity. The child comes into the world with a charac- 
ter^ with a few well-defined ways of acting in response to 
specific stimuli. The fundamental constituent of character 
is power ^ — not bhnd force but directed energy, efficiency 
in action toward some definite result. Strong, healthy 
muscles, steady nerves, acute senses, and active brain 
powers are the storehouses of this power. From this point 
of view character is sometimes defined as a *' completely 
fashioned will." Character must be strong and firm, but it 
must also contain the active principles of growth and 
development, because new situations continually arise. 
The second constituent is sensitiveness to situations. The 
native endowment of energy must be ready not only to act 
promptly when the occasion occurs but must respond ade- 
quately to the demands of the situation. While education 
is organizing the reactions into habits, it must always 
leave the child young and plastic enough to be instinctively 
sensitive to the new situations. Instinctive reactions attain 
results without foresight of what these results must be. 
Moral character secures its results by foresight of what 
these results ought to be. Judgment, the sense of relative 
values, is the selective, discriminating, directive principle 
of character. The school does much for the force of 
character, and it does much to determine the responsive- 
ness of the self to situations, but it does this chiefly 

12 



IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS 

through the enhghtening and training of the judgment. 
From this point of view, correct moral education must 
consist in affording occasions for making and testing 
judgments. 

The self is always a character, a personality, but for 
purposes of study and discussion it is proper to treat of 
three forms of control. The muscular and nervous systems 
are stored with energy, but with the exception of a few 
primary instincts their reactions are explosive, vague, and 
indefinite. These organs must be trained to become ready 
servants of the will. This requires the development of 
physical control. Ideas of ends and means, along with 
the development of muscles and nerves, develop instincts 
which ripen so rapidly that they conflict. Some ends must 
be repressed, some chosen. The means must be selected, 
arranged, used. This requires prudential control. In exe- 
cuting prudential acts and making worth judgments con- 
cerning their results, the agent discovers that the intent 
or purpose of the act is the only phase over which he has 
complete control, and discovers further that human acts 
may be judged both by motive and by results. Only 
moral acts are within the control of self. Willing to be 
good is being good. The moral agent chooses from con- 
flicting impulses and holds himself responsible for his 
choice. This making of worth judgments and acting upon 
them develops the distinctions between means and ends, 
between good and bad, between right and wrong. This is 
the development of moral control. 

The rise from blind instinct to moral insight is not made 
in a single bound. This developmental theory of morahty 
indicates three stages. In the instinctive stage the standard 

13 



MORAL TRAINING 

of right is egoistic, the right is the thing that the child 
wants to do or have. From his point of view his will 
makes it right to him. The child is altruistic as well as 
egoistic. Other persons are the chief factors in the situa- 
tions favorable to the discharge of human instincts and 
impulses, so that more and more the right is what play- 
mates, classmates, and parents or the social group approve 
and praise. Adolescent groups overlap and their standards 
disagree. These disagreements, along with budding reli- 
gious instincts, may lead to moral insight where the soul 
seeks a standard universal, a standard for all, forever. 
Moral training must take account of these stages. The 
teacher must be able to diagnose each individual case and 
must adjust instruction and authority accordingly. 

Authority and obedience. Thus far conduct has been 
discussed as developing from instincts and impulses, but 
every action is also a reaction with or against the circum- 
stances surrounding the agent. A human being is a creature 
of imitation and subject to the laws of suggestion. The 
learning child should have the opportunity to discover the 
laws and forms of conduct as seen in his stronger, wiser asso- 
ciates, and finally in the universe as a cosmos, and volun- 
tarily adjust his act to conform to this law as he sees it. 
This is obedience to authority and passes through the 
stages conforming to those of moral growth. Fear is not 
a final principle for the government of intelligent beings, 
but it is a primary native instinct and must be employed 
as a primary principle of control. The weakness and igno- 
rance of the child makes it imperative that a stronger, 
wiser person exercise continuous personal oversight. The 
instinctive reactions of fear produce the plastic, passive 

14 



IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS 

state of the body and mind, easily guided and controlled 
by the superior will of the one in authority. Belief, or faith, 
characterizes the second stage of authority. When the 
child has acquired strength and control of muscles, and a 
system of memories and images, he may be left alone in 
familiar situations. Behef in his own powers and in the 
sanity and soundness of the lessons from former acts of 
obedience to authority serves as an omnipresent, unseen 
guide to reactions. A developing organism and a progress- 
ive environment produce new situations. A higher, safer 
principle than fear or faith must be developed. This higher 
principle of insight or reason must analyze the new situa- 
tions and adjust the life accordingly. In this stage the 
inner law of the learner's life answers back to the moral 
order of the universe, and the soul has discovered absolute 
authority, under which freedom is achieved by joyous 
obedience. 

The principle of authority is permanent, universal, but 
the motive for obedience and the form of the act con- 
forming to the authority changes with the development 
of knowledge and power. The absolute authority of the 
ancient rulers over property and life made their subjects 
fear them. Increase of numbers and expansion of the race 
removed the subjects from the presence of the rulers and 
made decrees and gods necessary. Men acted according 
to their behef in these decrees. Increasing intelligence is 
forcing modern civilization to base its authority upon 
insight and reason. The normal child passes through 
these racial stages. It is the privilege and duty of the 
educator to help him gain time by passing through these 
early stages quickly and safely. The evolution of the 

15 



MORAL TRAINING 

mother, the father, and the home, along with the social 
bonds, have reduced the instinct of fear and its reactions 
to a minimum. The separation of church and state, the 
principle of equahty before the law, the decHne in the use 
of the catechism and the catechetical method, have greatly 
reduced the power of formal rules. Conduct based upon 
fear and faith gets its form and content from powers 
external to the agent. Freedom, democracy, the king- 
dom of heaven, is developed by substituting for these 
external forms of authority an inner, omnipresent principle 
in the form of a personal ideal to be realized. The perfect 
pattern for this moral ideal must be a perfect personality. 
Obedience is the moral act par excellence, because the 
child can disobey. When he obeys he chooses a standard, 
chooses to have his act realize the standard, and acts 
according to plan. The authority, the standard, must be 
right ; it must be rational ; it must fit the developing 
rationality in the child. If moral sanctions get their im- 
perative, commanding power from their being grounded 
in reason, in the very constitution of the human being as 
rational, then the child is rising into the full stature of his 
being when he comes to ask, '' Why } " When this ques- 
tion arises the child has passed through the stages of fear 
and even of faith, and is seeking insight. Only two courses 
are open to the teacher. He may substitute his own insight 
for that of the questioning child, throw him back into the 
state of faith, and ask him to trust the teacher's ration- 
ahty for the time being. If we have reasons sufficient for 
asking a child to do a thing, we need not be afraid to 
give them. If we cannot give them, or if the child cannot 
grasp them, we may at least doubt the wisdom of asking 

i6 



IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS 

him to do the thing at this time. If we continue to ground 
a child's conduct in authority represented by parent or 
teacher, what will he do when absent from them ? The 
child carries his reason with him. He cannot escape it if 
he would, and if he has acquired the habit of judging and 
grounding conduct on insight he has come to be a free 
moral agent. What, then, becomes of authority and obedi- 
ence .? They are given their universal, rational basis. If 
the authority of teacher and parent has no deeper founda- 
tion than ipse dixit^ democracy is in a sorry plight. Obedi- 
ence to authority, to law, is the very foundation of gov- 
ernment, because it is the foundation of moral character ; 
but the child or citizen who submits to the directions of 
teacher, parent, or law, and sees no authority back of or 
deeper than these, is not yet moral. Moral conduct arises 
from within. Moral training has not done its perfect work 
until it has made teacher, parent, and statute unnecessary. 
The moral soul is a law unto itself, because it has identified 
itself with the universal will and order : '* Thy will be done 
in earth as it is in heaven." 

Having discovered that rational freedom or personal 
self-control is the aim and motive of moral training, it 
becomes the imperative duty of the educator to discover 
and apply the means for reahzing this ideal with economy 
and efficiency. 

Morality arises with the form and content of self-con- 
sciousness. When the individual knows he is a person, 
and knows and chooses his own motives and means in 
action, he is a moral person. Any group of such individuals 
with a common, conscious purpose is a moral organization. 
The school is old enough and ought to be wise enough to 

17 



MORAL TRAINING 

know and to hold consciously and deliberately to the ethical 
purposes for which it is organized. The first essential step 
in this process is a firm grasp upon the new and increasing 
responsibilities of the school in the present social order. 
Because the school is the youngest of the five historic 
institutions, is supported by the members of the other 
social institutions, and deals with their children, almost 
every one presumes to advise, criticise, and even to dictate 
the ways and means of educating the youth. In this mul- 
titude of counselors there is confusion. The school can 
rise to the full dignity of a self-conscious power by making 
teaching a learned profession, by socializing the aims, 
means, and methods of the teaching process, and by 
socializing the school as an institution. Teaching is com- 
ing to be a learned profession because teachers are coming 
into possession of a body of expert knowledge and a system 
of expert practice. This expert knowledge concerns the 
nature of the child, his place in society, and the economic 
and skillful arrangement of the subjects and processes of 
learning as a means of the child's adjustment with nature 
and society. These bodies of knowledge are taking form 
under the titles of Genetic Psychology, Sociology, and 
Pedagogy. The first and fundamental fact for each of 
these sciences is the nature, dignity, and worth of the 
human soul. The physical sciences have done much to 
acquaint us with the nature and place of the child as an 
animal, but their deepest insight (and how grand and mag- 
nificent have been their achievements !) cannot measure 
this worth of the soul. These physical sciences measure 
the objective world in terms of space, time, and force. 
Space seems infinite. Not all the threads of cotton spun 

i8 



IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS 

would reach the nearest star. Measured by space, how 
small a thing is the child ! Eternity stretches before us 
and baffles our thought. By the measure of time, how 
short is childhood ! " Man born of a woman is of few days 
and full of trouble." What can we say of the child as a 
physical force ? Compared to the mighty engines of indus- 
try, or to the power that holds the worlds in their courses, 
the child seems as naught. By these space, time, and force 
standards, man is an atom, a trifle of energy. Our estimate 
of man's worth and the dignity of the teaching profession 
is not founded upon these measurements. 

*' What is man, that thou art mindful of him } . . . Thou 
hast made him a little less than God." ^ The child is a 
living soul, a conscious self-activity, and can be educated 
because he can think of himself as he ought to be. This 
majestic, inspiring, guiding '* ought " is the very essence of 
the human being, and makes the soul worth more than all 
the world besides. This was the insight of the Great 
Teacher, and gives the stamp of finality to his teaching 
concerning morality and religion. No higher, truer estimate 
can be put upon the human being. Consciousness of this 
moral worth of the child gives inspiration and rids the 
teacher's life of the petty annoyances of the trades and 
crafts. By dehberate choice the teacher has put himself 
into the company of prophets and seers, of Socrates and 
Jesus, and he must live worthy of the vocation wherein he 
is called. Next to the inherent moral nature of the child, 
the inspired moral life of the teacher is the essential moral 
power of the school. The instincts and impulses of the 
child are aroused and guided by the hving teacher as an 

1 Literal translation. 
19 



MORAL TRAINING 

ideal. How shall the teacher keep himself a pattern true 
to the moral order of the universe ? By keeping the ten- 
tacles of his inner being sensitive to the higher things of 
the spirit. We may deplore contagion as the means of 
spreading physical disease, but the teacher must appropriate 
its law as a powerful means of propagating moral health. 
Cheerfulness is as catching as the measles, — even more 
so. So also are public honesty and the other virtues. 
Witness the call to duty in pubhc office since the examples 
of Roosevelt and Folk. 

The greatest power for righteousness in the school is 
the teacher. He is the personal embodiment of the moral 
ideal for the child, and as such is a personal stimulus and 
guide. The point of growth for both mind and morals is 
where the child and teacher come into vital unity in thought 
and action. So also the moral health and growth of the 
teacher depends upon the fresh [moral atmosphere of a 
few great souls. This intimate association may be with a 
minister, a lawyer, a fellow-teacher, a principal, a saintly 
mother, even with a pupil. This life-giving moral touch 
should come from different angles. The teacher hungering 
and thirsting for righteousness will find it, even as the liv- 
ing plant seeks and finds the light. Another means of moral 
growth for both teacher and pupil is an intimate acquaint- 
ance with a few of the great teachers, — as Socrates, Aris- 
totle, Plato, Comenius, Pestalozzi, Frobel, Darwin, Agassiz, 
Goethe, Emerson. This list of rare spirits suggests the 
power of great books and great poems. Music and art are 
also great rectifiers of the spirit. A living teacher must 
know a few great artists and their masterpieces. An educa- 
tional leader in these days must have a living, growing 

20 



IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS 

interest and experience in some particular science, and also 
in some important industry. Above all the informational 
sources of inspiration and guidance, the teacher's active 
participation in some form of public or private charity, 
and the enjoyment of social events and healthy games, are 
means of physical and moral health and growth. 

The already overburdened teacher may ask, " How can 
all this be done .? " As well might he ask, " How can I 
get time to eat, when there is so much to do .? " The only 
means of artistic ease, efficiency, and joy in teaching is this 
constantly growing power gained by a living touch with 
the sources of truth, beauty, and goodness. This demand 
for a high, growing moral tone in the teacher's every word 
and act would be discouraging if it were not so easily pos- 
sible. Teaching offers a most splendid atmosphere for the 
growth of moral power. Situations arise to arouse every 
moral instinct, and they arise often enough to insure develop- 
ment. The teacher is actively, creatively interested in the 
development of children of different ages and abihty. He 
mingles socially and professionally with his peers, — as 
teachers, supervisors, principals, and superintendents. He 
is a servant of the state, and bears an active moral rela- 
tion to school boards and laws. He is in social contact 
with parents of different professions and trades. Best of 
all, the teacher has abundant opportunity to throw his 
influence in favor of all the moral forces of the community. 
What worthy moral and social opportunity does he lack ? 

Summary of the principles of moral growth. First, 
morality develops by specific acts, and each act has its 
root in an instinct or an impulse. Second, a social situa- 
tion, the touch of life upon life, is the natural stimulus and 



MORAL TRAINING 

atmosphere for the discharge of these instincts and impulses. 
Third, these acts must be repeated under varying circum- 
stances, until the motive, means, and results arise in con- 
sciousness so that the moral judgment grows. Fourth, the 
good acts must be made habitual, and be organized into 
character by selection and trial. Fifth, the standard of 
selection and the test of goodness is the thought and feel- 
ing of progressive unity of the individual life with the 
unfolding moral purposes of the world. 

The highest form of moral life, then, grows by appro- 
priate exercise under favorable conditions and circum- 
stances. The teacher grows by the same processes as the 
child, and must grow at the same time ; but there is the 
difference that makes the one a pupil and the other a 
teacher. The teacher must know the means and method 
of moral growth, and must be able to resolve them into 
forms suitable to the experience of the learner. This 
requires the teacher to know the aim of all the processes 
and to hold to it through every step. 

Ethical aim in education. Consciousness is focal. It 
centers its attention upon some aspect of reality, and for the 
time being all other aspects are subordinate. At present 
the eye of man is upon the material and industrial aspect 
of the world as never before. The natural is set over 
against the supernatural, the material over against the 
spiritual. The soul of man pants for unity, and some men 
have tried to dissolve this annoying antagonism in their 
own minds by denying the reality of the supernatural or 
spiritual. But even this *' monarchical constitution of con- 
sciousness," as Kant called it, cannot permanently hush 
the voice of conscience to the call of duty. All the wealth 

22 



IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS 

of this world cannot drown the soul's longing for immor- 
tality. The god of mammon cannot stop the heart's pant- 
ing after the living God. The antithesis between the 
material and spiritual must be dissolved, and they must be 
combined in a higher synthesis by a new vision of their 
unity. Education, morahty, and religion cannot hold the 
minds and affections of men and regenerate them by con- 
demning wealth and material possessions. We cannot annul 
the power of these by denying their reality. The moral 
forces of the universe must appropriate the wealth of this 
world and turn it to the highest uses of men. 

This world movement manifests itself in education by 
dividing the forces into two camps, the one holding to the 
industrial aim, the other to the cultural aim. In subject- 
matter they set the sciences over against the classics, 
claiming that the sciences help man to secure physical 
freedom, and that the humanities produce spiritual wor- 
thiness. This is an insult to both sets of subjects, because 
it is partial and unfair. Jesus pronounced the formula for 
uniting these conflicting aims when he said, " Seek ye 
first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness, and all 
these things shall be added unto you." Physical freedom is 
a condition, a means of spiritual growth. Making a living 
is one of the means of living a life. The sin of the age 
has been in making the means an end, and thus losing both. 
Physical freedom cannot come by seeking it. It is realized 
and appreciated only when made to serve the soul's higher 
interests. President Tucker said of wealth, '' It must be 
spiritualized." So the school aims, branches, and methods 
must be moralized. Man has a body; he is a living soul. 
He has a right to physical freedom, but he must use it for 

23 



MORAL TRAINING 

the sake of the soul. What a man has^ ought to be put to 
the service of what he is and what he hopes to be. There 
is no necessary antagonism between spiritual growth and 
physical freedom if the aim is set upon the highest. When 
the mind identifies an aim with an impulse, or grafts the 
idea of an end upon an instinct, a motive has been devel- 
oped. The teacher guided by an ethical aim will inspire 
the children with ethical motives for work and conduct. If 
the teacher or child intends a moral action, the result, how- 
ever deplorable, cannot be immoral. An act the purpose 
of which is immoral cannot result in morality, however 
beneficial the outcome of the act may seem to be. Neither 
teacher nor pupil can be indifferent to results, but it is the 
motive, intent, purpose, which builds the character. The 
first problem in moral training is how to make the motives 
moral. Morality has its roots in instincts and impulses, but 
a particular moral act is a conscious process ; that is, it is 
under control by attention. Individual initiative is the char- 
acteristic of all acts for which the agent is responsible, but 
the agent responds in a situation. The incentive to an act 
is an inner principle. In a conscious act this inner prin- 
ciple is the idea of the end identified with an impulse. 
In the moral act it is the idea of a good end chosen. The 
natural results of every act are twofold : first, the effort 
and action in mind, brain, nerve, and muscle are reported 
back to consciousness as a pleasurable or painful process, 
and also recorded in these organs as tendencies to act 
again in a similar manner; second, these processes produce 
results objective to the agent, such as words, acts, things 
made. These, too, are reported back to consciousness, and 
finish the psychic circle of action and furnish the basis for 

24 



IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS 

judging the goodness or badness of the motives, means, 
and methods. The ideas of these objective results are the 
incentives to prolonged, repeated acts, — as those of the 
school. It is the express business of the teacher to bring 
the child into the situation where these natural ends come 
clearly into consciousness as ideals, and then provide the 
occasion for the child to test the result. The child must 
know whether he is succeeding or failing. The end held 
in mind as the ideal is the motive for action, but the 
past results help form this ideal. The moral motives are 
ideas of results that follow naturally and surely from the 
processes they arouse. The teacher who does not know the 
natural incentives, and how to have the child test them, 
substitutes artificial ends and tests, such as per cents, 
prizes, rewards, immunities, or punishments. These are 
artificial because they are not the natural result of the 
process ; because they cannot be grafted upon the native 
stock ; and because they depend upon the teacher and are 
absent when he is absent. Moral motives are in the life, 
and are present there as inspirations and guides. The 
effects of this artificial system have been as bad upon 
the intellectual results as upon the moral outcome. Only 
a small percentage of public-school pupils continue as stu- 
dents and learners. After school days there is no one to 
set the tasks ; none to give the per cents, rewards, or 
punishments. These facts are sufficient reasons for con- 
demning artificial incentives. 

Working to get to the head of the class, as the only 
motive, is unmoral, because it is unsocial. Only one can be 
at the head. This motive overstimulates the active, over- 
sensitive ones, who need the stimulus least, and discourages 

25 



MORAL TRAINING 

the inactive, weak ones, who need help most. Moral excel- 
lence is universal, open to all. Working to get to the head 
of the class is unmoral because it is unfair. The weakest 
child in the class, in scholastic attainment (on which get- 
ting ahead depends), may be more moral in intention and 
effort, and may be growing faster, than the one at the 
head. This desire to surpass others institutes an immoral 
basis of judgment. The child often rejoices in the failure 
of others because by their failure he may more easily get 
ahead. It institutes the comparison of himself with the 
failing ones, whereas the moral comparison is himself as 
he was with himself as he is and ought to be. 

Per cents or rewards for certain degrees of excellence 
remove the unsocial feature, because all may attain this 
excellence ; but this motive is still unmoral, because the 
child practices deceit with his own processes. He works 
upon spelling, or history, or geography, and gets a star, or 
head mark, or other thing foreign to the process, and these 
can be gotten by dishonest means. It is sometimes urged 
that pupils work harder and get more under the high pres- 
sure of the per-cent system. A few pupils may get more 
of the markable material, but they get less real growth. 
This is evident from the fact that when the per cents and 
rewards stop, the process stops. Both teacher and pupil 
are deceived. They believe that the effort and activity 
aroused by the intoxicating stimulus of these objects for- 
eign to the actions yield knowledge and power ; whereas 
the inner, higher, finer processes of the soul rebel against 
the procedure, and both teacher and pupil are glad when 
it is over. These artificial incentives cannot be carried 
over into life, and they kill the native thirst for knowledge. 

26 



IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS 

These improper relations with the problems of thought 
are as unmoral as wrong motives in dealing with persons, 
because both are breaks in the integrity of the life process. 
Both are promoted by selfish ends, and the results aimed 
at may be secured by dishonest means. 

The artificial character of the common-school period and 
practices appears when we compare this period with child- 
hood before and with manhood after school. We should be 
anxious about the physical and mental health of a child that 
had to be rewarded, punished, or bribed to get it to play. 
So in the *' school of life " we hear of professional ethics. 
We should count a physician morally unsound who gauged 
his care and skill in a case by the fee or reward. We count 
the mason immoral who would put bad mortar and bricks 
into a foundation because no reward was offered for good 
material. If the school period must graft its process upon 
the native reactions of the child, developed before the 
school period, and would lead the pupil to live a moral, 
studious, learning life after school, it must appeal to the 
motives native to life in and out of school. Are there 
then no places for rewards and punishments, for external 
leverage upon the pupils ? 

There is no place for these devices with normal, healthy 
minds. Upon pathological cases they may be used with 
wise caution as mental and moral medicines ; but the 
teacher who needs to use these nostrums with the whole 
school, or a large part of it, must look to himself and other 
teachers as the cause of these unnatural conditions. The 
ingenuity and energy used in inventing and administering 
these foreign, traditional stimuli to action, if used in com- 
ing into living touch with truth and into individual contact 

27 



MORAL TRAINING 

with the child, will remove the necessity. If singleness of 
purpose and whole-souled action are absolute conditions 
of healthy development in childhood, and are also sound 
measures of skill and morahty in manhood, what right has 
the teacher or school to use rewards, per cents, punish- 
ments, and immunities in this formative period between 
infancy and maturity ? Is the child and youth so abnormal 
a thing that truth and knowledge have no attraction for 
him, and that he must be bribed to exercise the functions 
necessary to get knowledge and skill ? Our continuance 
in this mediaeval practice, based upon the doctrine of 
total depravity, must be set down to the credit of our dis- 
beUef in the health and sanity of childhood and in the 
power of truth to nourish the soul ; or it must be set down 
to ignorance, and failure to adjust the world of truth to 
the growing demands of the child's life. The native springs 
to conduct are the same in school as out of school ; it is 
the high privilege and duty of the teacher to help the child 
to graft high, worthy aims upon these impulses. This is 
done by discovering the dominant interests of the child and 
focusing them upon the nearest related truth, beauty, and 
goodness. Fear and love of particular persons and things 
are primary instincts ; they are the basis of moral motives 
because they are social. The teacher's approval and dis- 
approval of the child's acts prompted by these instincts are 
the essential means by which the child is taught to make 
correct moral judgments. Imitation is the social instinct 
par excellence ; here moral training consists in the teacher's 
presenting himself as a worthy example for imitation, and 
in pointing out other copies. Emulation is an egoistic 
form of imitation ; it is made moral by leading the child 

28 



IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS 

to emulate his former self, — to try to do better than he 
did, rather than to do better than some one else has done. 
Curiosity is the instinctive basis of knowledge ; it must be 
kept unselfish and turned to service. Self-expression is 
the highest instinct ; the child is made in the image of his 
Creator, and realizes this image by creating. Construc- 
tiveness and the instinct of ownership by effort are associ- 
ated instincts. All these instincts are made the basis of 
moral acts by aiming to use their products for service. 
( Each of the school subjects must and can be moralized ; 
they will be moralized by being socialized ; they will be 
socialized by being made immediately serviceable both to 
the individual and to society./ The details of the reorgan- 
ization must be worked out in terms of the situation in 
each school district, but the guiding principles will appear 
to every anxious, thoughtful teacher when he substitutes 
the Copernican child-centered system for, the old Ptole- 
maic subject-centered system. The natural motive for the 
language subjects is the social desire to communicate 
thought and feeling. The instinct of imitation, the desire 
to be like others, will start the process of learning the use 
of the tools of communication. The moral motive for a 
letter or composition is a desire and effort to tell some one 
something he would never know if the letter or composition 
were never written ; for example, each child writes the 
invitation to his parents to attend the picture exhibition, 
or the next school concert, or parents' day exercises, or a 
ball game, or field-day sports. The anxiety to have this 
invitation clear, forcible, and elegant, provides the motive 
and stimulus for the drill upon it, and the finished product 
is of social service. To inform parent or teacher or other 

29 



MORAL TRAINING 

class, brother, friend, or some one, the child composes an 
account of an interesting experiment or lesson or trip or 
what not. The absolute demands of the case to make the 
language true to the thing gives one of the finest opportu- 
nities for teaching accuracy of judgment and accuracy of 
language, — the absolute essentials of truth-getting and 
truth-teUing. Without further elaboration it must appear 
to every sincere thinker that even so generally distasteful 
a subject as composition has almost infinite possibilities 
for social and moral training. 

It is so with every other essential subject. What social 
or moral motive can a child have for oral reading when 
the teacher and the rest of the class sit there holding the 
book and silently reading the same paragraph .? But sup- 
pose the reader is out in front of the class and every eye 
and ear is upon him, trying to build the mental picture hid- 
den in the paragraph, testing it to see whether or not it tal- 
lies with the one gotten in study. In this social situation 
the child must serve the class ; he must be honest and true 
to the author. Here also we have the motive and measure of 
correct interpretation and correct expression. What a new 
and enlivening motive for careful study beforehand ! Each 
paragraph demands of the child all he knows of language 
and expression, and requires him to put it to immediate 
use for social service and approval. On the part of the 
teacher this conception of reading gives the proper motive 
and standard for the selection of the material. 

Each branch must yield ethical fruit, because the whole 
educational process is fundamentally ethical. This demand 
in no way annuls the differences between the branches. 
The teacher cannot be indifferent to what or how he 

30 



IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS 

teaches. He dare not omit fundamental subjects or sub- 
stitute one for another. It has been objected that arith- 
metic and grammar do not and cannot cure lying. No 
sane person proposes them as cures for moral disease. 
They are positive means of mental growth and social inter- 
course. Arithmetic and grammar may not cure lying, but 
they are powerful tools for discovering and telling the truth. 
The abiding conviction that industry, social intercourse, 
civilization, are impossible without arithmetic, geography, 
science, language, literature, and history, will give inspira- 
tion and guidance in the minutest details of the schoolroom. 
When a teacher feels that reading and writing put a child 
into vital connection with the rest of the intelligent world, 
past and present, he does not come to his work like a 
driven slave or hke a factory hand. This ethical content 
is the very hfeblood of the subject. It is not tacked on 
at the end by a '' moral application " or a sermonette, but, 
like all things moral, impHes insight and service, — faces 
toward the individual and toward society. The child does 
not know the multiplication table until he has insight 
into its universal application, and uses it as a means of 
communication, that is, social exchange. The power to 
handle spelling and numbers and geography with moral 
results cannot be sent to a teacher by mail, by essay, or 
by book. It comes by insight, but it is within easy reach 
of teacher and pupil. Often a mere question opens the 
flood gates of light. Is the multiplication table true in 
Germany } How long will it be true ? How many races 
have language } It is this universal character of the 
branches that gives them their interest for the individual 
and their power for service to society, and the teacher 

31 



MORAL TRAINING 

must use the subject for both (for the individual and for 
society) before it will yield insight or power. 

Somewhere Emerson says, " We send our children to 
the master, but the boys educate them." As an organized 
group of persons, the school offers exercise for every 
essential social function. Educational theory distinguishes 
between instruction and discipline, and often sets them 
over against each other as antagonistic, or at least treating 
discipline as subordinate to instruction. Both processes 
must be viewed as means of teaching the child how to 
live with his fellows. A school, like a person, has a certain 
moral tone. The school gets this moral tension mostly from 
the principal and teachers, but they produce it in the chil- 
dren by the motives and methods they use in securing the 
so-called school virtues, of which Dr. Harris names four, — 
(i) regularity, (2) punctuality, (3) silence, and (4) industry. 
Dr. E. E. White adds three, — (5) neatness, (6) accuracy, 
and (7) obedience. These are important elements in charac- 
ter, and the school has occasion and means for enforcing all of 
them ; but their efficiency in forming the moral will depends 
upon the motives by which they are secured. The military 
regime may enforce regularity and silence by methods 
which compel the child to explode with an Indian war 
whoop when he gets out on the street. These cardinal vir- 
tues may be made so distasteful that the child will be glad 
to be relieved from practicing them. They are conditions 
for good school work and are most effective when secured 
by indirection ; the natural and possible tension between 
the child and the truth, and social opportunities offered at 
school, will induce each and every one of them. They are 
virtues by habit rather than by insight, so they are secured 

32 



IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS 

by practice under natural motives instead of by instruction. 
Each is a form of self-control, and as such is fundamental 
in character building, but must not be held as an end. It 
has been assumed that if the child practice regularity, 
industry, and the rest of these virtues in school, he will 
carry the same virtues over into life. The fact is that 
this does not necessarily happen : the most regular attend- 
ant at the shop may be very irregular in performing home 
duties ; the idle apprentice is not infrequently an industri- 
ous billiard player. These so-called virtues must not be 
minimized, but they are only conditions, and must be 
moralized by proper interests and ideals. The successful 
bank robber would practice all of them in a single robbery. 
Habits are the tools of virtue ; character supplies the 
motives that use them. 

The spontaneous, instinctive, free activity of the play- 
ground is the natural and important antithesis of the con- 
trolled action in the schoolroom. It develops the school 
virtues, too, but by self-made rules. Play develops social 
agreement : the players make rules governing the individ- 
ual grounds and situations, and then joyously obey them 
because they are their own and they see the necessity for 
them ; they play by rule so that they can play with others. 
Play develops natural leadership and the possibilities in play 
make this dangerous : tyranny may develop ; brute force 
may be substituted for leadership; individual initiative 
may be suppressed. So school play needs to be skillfully 
supervised, and supervision is most effective when least 
obtrusive. Supervision provides suitable means, places, 
and groupings of children, and interchange of groups. 
Fair play, a square deal, is the keynote. As President 

33 



MORAL TRAINING 

Tucker well said, '' Morality is of most use where it is 
most difficult to get." The development of the spirit of 
fair play in a place as free as the playground is one of the 
school's greatest opportunities to teach morality. 

The subjects of mstruction as mea7ts of 7?toral training. 
Every rational act is a means of developing moral charac- 
ter. Since the aim of education and of life is ethical, a 
subject of instruction proves its right to a place in the 
school course by contributing to ethical development. One 
of the most unfortunate mistakes in educational theory 
and practice has been the treating of some truths as secu- 
lar and others as sacred. It is said that *' education is a 
doubtful factor, having to do with the intellect, and giving 
reckless power unless restrained by a religious heart ; that 
it (education) is an affair of this world, to satisfy hunger 
and pride, while religion is for eternity, satisfying and 
saving the soul." Paulsen has well said, ^*We have no 
more right to appeal to God as the cause in morals than in 
physics." 1 The universe of human life is organized and 
made possible by the law of moral order, as the physical 
universe is held together by the law of gravity. They are 
different laws, but both are God's laws, and therefore 
sacred. Violation of either is sure to bring punishment. 
The laws of health are as sacred as the ten commandments. 
*' Two times two equals four " is as universal and as sacred 
as *' Thou shalt not steal." Discovering the sac redness 
of the truths of the common-school branches in no way 
lessens the sacredness of the truths formerly classed as 
sacred. It is a leveling-up process, and gives new mean- 
ing to every fact and lesson. 

1 Ethics, p. 341. 

34 



IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS 

Clear, vital knowledge is a great power for righteous- 
ness. We may define truth as the correspondence of the 
processes in the mind to the fact in the thing. '' When 
the thought in the mind fits the fact, and the word on the 
tongue fits the thought, the circuit of truth is complete." 
From this standpoint nature study and the natural sciences 
offer the finest opportunity for truth-getting and truth- 
telUng. The object is there, inviting the student to square 
his thought and his language with it. Intellectual honesty 
is the first requirement, as well as one of the highest 
results of the scientific method. 

Mathematics is the so-called exact science. With the 
same data every pupil must come to absolutely the same 
result. Its conclusions are universal. The language and 
processes of mathematics are perfect instruments for meas- 
uring quantitative values. It has the finest tools for making 
worth judgments concerning matter and force, and is the 
only means of confidence in social exchange of commodities. 

As the portrayal of the real struggles of men for indus- 
trial and spiritual freedom, history furnishes great exam- 
ples of moral choice and moral action. It inculcates the 
lesson of suspending judgment until the facts are known. 

Literature will always hold the first place as a means of 
moral training, because it gives the ideal examples of the 
moral struggle for freedom. In hterature the inner voice 
of the soul is answering back to the voice of the brook and 
the bird and the flower, revealing that the world within is 
in unity with the world without in the struggle to express 
its divine essence. 

The school arts — reading, writing, drawing, and music 
— present occasions for control of mind and muscles. 

35 



MORAL TRAINING 

They are all means of social exchange of thought and feel- 
ing. They have social standards and require approval and 
disapproval, individual and social. Music, for example, 
demands the control of the breathing, the management 
of the voice in pitch and movement in harmony with 
the rest of the class. Much of the emotional uplift of 
music comes from the sense of unity in action with others. 
The highest and finest results in character come from the 
aesthetic elements in all the arts, because the essence of 
beauty is unity, harmony ; but these arts are essential 
means of moral character in a social being aside from their 
aesthetic elements ; they are the means of training the 
child in social cooperation. 

Maxims : their power and tcse. The advocates of moral 
and religious training have relied mainly upon moral max- 
ims, rules, and commandments. Students of biography 
are struck with the readiness with which great men hke 
Socrates, Jesus, FrankUn, Washington, and Lincoln applied 
the appropriate maxims to trying situations. The erro- 
neous conclusion has often been drawn that the uprightness 
and power of their lives was produced by these formulas, 
whereas the truth is that these maxims are the products 
of their lives. This singular inverting of the process is 
another example of the effort to put old heads on young 
shoulders, or, translated into the new psychology, to put 
old brains upon young spinal cords. It is quite possible to 
run the words of those maxims into the brain, either 
through the eye as letters or through the ear as sounds, 
and even to have them run out again through hand or 
mouth, and yet they may have no power over the life. 
The words of the Ten Commandments or the Golden Rule 

36 



IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS 

may run through the language machinery of^ the child and 
not rise into the higher regions of thought or run down 
into the nerves and muscles of action. The Golden Rule 
does not tell us what to do in a particular situation, and 
has no power to make us do it if it did. The devil can 
cite Scripture for his purpose ; he used it to tempt Jesus, 
and it had no power in his mouth ; but when Jesus cited 
Scripture the devil fled. The life gives power and meaning 
to the maxim ; education must put the maxim into the life, 
and then it wjll be in the mouth ready for the occasion. 
We dare not reverse this process ; putting it into the 
mouth does not insure its reaching the springs of conduct. 
Maxims, rules, commandments, are generals, not partic- 
ulars, and, like all generals, come at the end of a teaching 
process to be carried over into action under new situations. 
A rational being must analyze a new situation before he 
can act morally. The maxim or rule is a powerful tool 
of analysis. The Golden Rule does not tell how to do in 
this new situation, but it does provide a method for ana- 
lyzing the case, though it can do this only when it has 
been taught as a method for analyzing social situations. 
All this must not discourage us in the use of maxims, 
but must inspire and guide us in their right use. These 
moral maxims of the moral leaders are of inestimable value 
when used as formulas, as generalizations. " To repeat the 
formulas of knowledge, and to possess that knowledge, are 
two quite different things." ^ There is no such principle 
as " knowledge for knowledge's sake." Knowledge has no 
" sake." It is for the sake of hfe, and must function as a 
guide in the psychic circle of action before it is knowledge. 

1 Aristotle. 

37 



MORAL TRAINING 

The school of the future will take on more and more 
the form of a workshop, the form of the laboratory where 
knowledge is made vital by being put to immediate use. 
This does not imply a change of equipment or a change of 
subjects (except the addition of manual training where 
this has not already been introduced) so much as it implies 
a new point of view. 

The recitation. The well-conducted recitation is a social 
event. It is a joint search after truth ; a friendly, helpful 
criticism of wrong steps ; a social approval of right answers 
or steps ; a feeling of social dependence and individual 
independence. The possibilities for developing the social, 
ethical judgment upon self and others in the recitation has 
not been dreamed of by most teachers. A real recitation 
consists of an individual act, class judgment passed upon 
it, and a final joint agreement on essentials. In play, in 
work, in the recitation, the leaders will appear. 

Leadership. In a democracy the development of intelli- 
gent, competent leaders is as important as the development 
of the common intelligence. A great function of the 
teacher is to discover genius and ability and give it scope 
for exercise. Any programme, course of study, or school 
machinery that limits any child's power is unjust and 
undemocratic. Under the present school machinery it is 
safe to say that the bright, competent pupil suffers more 
than the dull one. According to popular judgment, one of 
the most grievous faults of the teacher is '' partiaUty." 
Popular judgment errs, however, in its mathematical inter- 
pretation of impartiality. Impartiality does not mean equal 
marks, equal lessons, equal time, to each pupil. It does 
mean that each child shall have the opportunity to use all 

38 



IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS 

its talents. The only kind of partiality which condemns a 
teacher is giving partial views of truth, and thereby giving 
partial opportunities to exercise all the life functions to 
their healthy limit. 

Punishmenty and the reformation of the wrongdoer. 
Good character is a positive moral force, and moral training 
teaches the free moral agent what is ''that good and per- 
fect will," and trains him in the execution of right ends 
chosen. In spite of the teacher's instruction and example, 
the child may choose to act against his own better self 
and against the school, and must be restored to unity with 
his own judgment, the school, and the moral order of the 
world. In Social and Ethical Interpretation Mr. Baldwin 
has shown that society is a psychological organism, and 
that unity of purpose and action is the primary necessity 
for development and progress. In this formula we have the 
standard and measure for right and wrong conduct and for 
punishment. Wrong conduct is disorganization, disunity, 
breaking the law of the moral order. The purpose of pun- 
ishment is to restore the child to normal, healthy action, 
and to unity with himself and society. Educationally, 
punishment, or any act which causes a breach between 
teacher and pupil, between pupil and the school or society, 
is wrong, indeed immoral ; because morality consists in 
a progressive harmonizing of the individual life with the 
moral order. Punishment, then, may be immoral in its con- 
sequences, even when administered with the best of inten- 
tions. The new social order demands a reorganization of 
our theories and practices in punishment. The importance 
of this appears in the fact that studies of the inmates of 
our reform schools, jails, and penitentiaries show that most 

39 



MORAL TRAINING 

of these wrongdoers were wrongdoers at school and were, 
in a large percentage of cases, punished in school for the 
very form of evil for which they have been committed to 
these penal institutions. Many school punishments do not 
cure. It is unfair, because untrue, to point to the schools as 
the positive cause of crime ; but it is true that the schools 
have not cured boys and girls of criminal tendencies which 
manifest themselves in school. The positive, permanent 
restoration of the wrongdoer to unity with his higher self 
and with society too seldom enters our heads and hearts 
as administrators of correction and punishment. Punish- 
ment is pain, and, like all pain, should help bring about 
normal conditions. When the child, instead of looking 
upon his wrong act as the cause of the pain, looks upon 
the teacher or society as the real cause of his punishment, 
he is being further separated from the school unity. The 
teacher and the means of punishment must not take the 
child's attention away from the causal relation between 
his act and his punishment. Herein appears the immorality 
of keeping a pupil after school, or of assigning school les- 
sons as punishments, such as the committing of poetry or 
portions of history to memory, writing lists of words, etc. 
A thirteen-year-old boy stole another pupil's lunch and lied 
about it. He was ordered by the principal to commit two 
pages of the Constitution of the United States. It was 
not learned at 3.30 p.m. The boy appealed to the prin- 
cipal to extend the time because he had a paper route 
and needed to meet the four o'clock train. The principal 
refused, no doubt thinking that this increased the punish- 
ment. Could the committing of the Constitution teach 
the boy the heinousness of lying and stealing } Was there 

40 



IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS 

any time to think about his deeds ? If he had not been 
caught, or if there had been no Constitution, he might 
not have been punished. Did the principal's making him 
break his engagement with the paper company and with 
his patrons teach him to be truthful ? 

From the educator's standpoint, the purpose of punish- 
ment is the reformation of the wrongdoer. Discipline and 
punishment are teaching processes as much as are gram- 
mar or arithmetic lessons, and when we remember that con- 
duct and behavior is the whole of life, we must welcome the 
occasions for discipline and even for punishment. No sane 
person is glad that a child's instincts, impulses, and habits 
have taken wrong forms, but the real teacher is glad that 
these forms manifest themselves, so they may be worked 
over into correct reactions. The teacher is not glad that 
the child has a disposition to cheat, but he is glad that, 
since this disposition is in the child, the symptom has mani- 
fested itself in such a way that he can get at the wrong 
reaction and transform it into self-reliance and independ- 
ence. The principle of punishment, as stated by Spencer, 
is, '* The punishment must be of the nature of the offense, 
and proportioned to it." The difficulty in applying this 
formula arises from mistaking the nature of the offense ; 
but if we hold firmly to the instinctive basis of morality 
and remember that the wrong arises within, in the choice, 
in the will, the problem becomes quite simple. If the pupil 
willed to break the law, to break with his better self, with 
the social group, the punishment, to be of the same nature, 
must work upon his will rather than upon his hands or his 
hide. The pupil restores himself and the school to whole- 
ness by reversing his choice. Here we have the means of 

41 



MORAL TRAINING 

measuring the amount, — just enough to bring about the 
reversing. The prevalent mistake in punishment is the 
teacher's thinking he must do something to vindicate his 
authority, and the mechanical view of life and morality- 
suggests the employment of some external, mechanical 
means, such as a strap, a slap, an ugly, cross sentence, or 
some other evidence of " the great gulf fixed " between 
himself and the pupil under discipline. When a child has 
broken the law, nothing the teacher can do will vindicate 
his own authority. The teacher's power and right is 
asserted by the child's reversing his choice and act and 
accepting the teacher's standards and interpretations of 
the law. In cases of rebellion and insubordination the 
family, the school, and the state still resort to force and 
corporal punishment. This form of punishment is a relic 
of the times of slavery, and the teacher who has not devel- 
oped insight into the power of free human will over con- 
duct, and discovered means of putting it to work, is afraid 
and in bondage when forbidden to use muscle force in 
management. Again, there are communities where parent 
and pupil expect corporal restraint. Order must be pre- 
served, and authority must be vindicated ; open rebellion, in 
family and school as well as in the state, must be met with 
force enough to bring the rebellious spirit into that state 
of submission where real redemptive work may be begun. 
A teacher might be excused for using corporal punishment 
in self-defense, but could hardly be excused for bringing 
about the necessity for it. Muscular resistance and bodily 
pain are only the beginnings of the punishing process, and 
the restoration to unity must be begun after the use of the 
rod. Except in cases of rebeUion the rod has widened the 

42 



IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS 

breach between pupil and authority, between the child and 
the teacher, and has complicated the process. It is possible 
to whip a child and then follow up the whipping by that 
sympathy and guidance that drowns the animal spirits of 
resistance aroused by the pain ; but the teacher who can 
do this after the use of the rod could have done it more 
easily before, except in cases of rebellion or where the child 
voluntarily chooses this form of punishment. The most 
ardent wielder of the birch always admits that corporal 
punishment is an extremity, and the child knows this, too. 
The child knows also that when he is bigger he will not be 
punished in this way. This is President Eliot's argument 
against corporal punishment, and it is sound. This idea of 
getting even with the one in authority, or even of being 
relieved of punishment when his muscles are strong enough, 
is poor material for a democracy whose life depends upon 
union founded upon intelligence and morality. Punishment, 
and all other school exercises, must bring the child into a 
more vital unity with his higher self and with his social 
group ; and any means that secures this is justified by the 
result, but the artist secures his ends skillfully and easily. 
The good is the enemy of the best because it may be sub- 
stituted for the best. The application of this theory of 
punishment requires accurate insight into the nature of the 
wrong to be righted. 

Wrong acts arise from three sources : ignorance, — not 
knowing what is right ; thoughtlessness or carelessness, — 
not knowing or caring what the efficient means of securing 
good results are ; and action contrary to knowledge, — not 
knowing the terrible results of such action. For all these 
wrong acts the child must be punished in the sense that he 

43 



MORAL TRAINING 

must come to be sorry for the results and choose to have 
them different. In the last analysis these acts arise from 
three phases of ignorance, and the teacher's function in each 
is that of helper and counselor. Most of the bad results from 
punishment in home, school, and state, arise from the wrong 
attitude of the ones in authority. They act as if the wrong 
were against them. They assume the assertive, aggressive, 
instead of the sympathetic, helpful attitude. This arises 
from a number of causes, traditional and practical, but 
chiefly from lack of insight into the nature of human life. 
The teacher forgets that there are two persons before him 
in the person of the one, — the past pupil who did the 
wrong act, and the present self who must take the conse- 
quences. The railing against the past wrongdoer does little 
good ; helping to bear the consequences and avoid the 
repetition is always appreciated, and almost always accepted. 
The normal child is potentially good and potentially criminal. 
It is the single eye upon the pupil potentially good that 
gives guidance and that can induce sympathy and loving 
help ; the attention upon the wrong act shows up the crimi- 
nal. The teacher has a right to be against the criminal, 
but he can only be against him effectively by being for the 
good : overcome evil with good. Punishment is at one with 
the other forms of instruction in process and method ; the 
subject-matter is different. 

Wrong acts due to ignorance are most easily handled and 
most easily overlooked. Many more serious wrongs would 
be avoided by careful handling of these cases. In primary 
grades, in the first phase of authority, the mere disapproval 
of the teacher stamps the act as wrong and induces rapid 
reconciliation. In the second stage, the social disapproval, 

44 



IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS 

— the fact that the group disapproves, — is enough. If a 
grammar-school pupil or a high-school pupil sins through 
ignorance, he should study the case until the reasons for 
its being wrong are clearly seen, and the means for correct 
redress clearly understood. 

Wrong acts due to thoughtlessness or carelessness are 
easily diagnosed. The offender says, " I did not think," or 
" I did not mean to,"or '' I could not help it " ; — all nega- 
tive statements. These careless, thoughtless ones must be 
led to spur themselves by proper motives to positive, definite, 
controlled action. 

Wrong acts due to action contrary to knowledge are 
positively immoral and must be handled as such. The 
ignorance in this case is not of what is right, or of how to 
do the right ; it is lack of insight into the consequences 
of the wrong act. In this case the offender must face 
his deed until the consequences are clearly in conscious- 
ness. No situation requires more moral poise, insight, and 
tact, than a case of wrongdoing. Poise reveals controlled 
strength. This inspires confidence, and if need be fear, on 
the part of the wrongdoer. The teacher has no right to 
worry over the wrong deed of the child. Hq must welcome 
it as a symptom expressing a state of mind and character 
that needs reforming. The wrongdoer must do the worry- 
ing. The only ground for the teacher's worrying is lack 
of insight into the principles for restoring the wayward 
child to the straight and narrow way. Insight is the source 
of poise. It inspires confidence by revealing the power to 
help the wrongdoer and by indicating when the offender is 
reformed. Tact has been defined as the power to touch an 
individual instance with a universal law ; insight, then, is a 

45 



MORAL TRAINING 

fundamental requirement, because it reveals this law. The 
wrongdoer must face his deed and make restitution, as far 
as possible, both to himself and to the school and to society. 
The psychological stages by which wrongs are righted are 
the same in education, morality, and religion. The offender 
looks backward upon the deed and then traces its conse- 
quences upon self and upon others. This requires the pro- 
spective view. Having discovered the wrong and the right, 
he must will allegiance to the ideal. Religious thinkers 
have given more attention to this process, and name the 
stages "repentance," "faith," and "consecration." The 
practical problem of the teacher is how to help the child 
through all these stages. It must be repeated that the 
wrongdoer must do the work. The teacher stands ready to 
help, but the child must be left alone to work out his own 
salvation unless he asks help. Teachers must quit their 
talking in cases of punishment if they expect reformation 
to take place. It is a process in the child's will. No finer 
lesson on moral regeneration is known than the parable of 
the prodigal son. Wrongdoing is disunity, discord, separa- 
tion. Taking his portion away ; leaving his father ; going 
into a far country ; riotous living ; association with swine ; 
hungry, and no man gave to him,-- these are so many expres- 
sions of this principle of wrong as separation and discord. 
The regeneration is described as "coming to himself." "I 
will arise and go to my father, and will say unto him, . . . 
Make me as one of thy hired servants." The father's act 
in this parable indicates the teacher's function. The pupil 
is disorderly in line when marching into school : if the prin- 
ciple of the parable is applicable to this case we shall see 
its universality and validity. This act is clearly a case of 

46 



IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS 

disunity, lack of harmony. The pupil is bodily and spirit- 
ually out of school by his own act. He has gone into the 
far country ; is riotous. If all the pupils did so they would 
break up the school. What must he do ? He must restore 
himself to unity with the school. This requires, first, a clear 
sense of his separation, his disunity, and a desire to be back 
in harmony with the school. He will not have this desire 
if he does not have faith in the school or in something 
there. His third act is to set about using his self-control 
to put himself in unity with the school. 

The safest, sanest way to get the child to face his deed 
is to ask him to write out a clear, accurate account of 
what happened. Here is a fine occasion for training the 
ethical judgment. There are two factors in the moral act, 

— the agent and the situation. Adam-like, the wrongdoer 
omits the agent, and writes about the '' other fellow." Of 
course this must not be accepted. It may be necessary in 
extreme cases to ask the child to omit everything but 
references to the agent until he sees that it is his deed. 
Writing the account is better than oral narration ; children 
are more accurate in writing, and less likely to be untruth- 
ful ; it is down in black and white ; the teacher can take 
his time to study it, if need be. In a written account each 
child must depend upon himself ; the wise teachers handle 
offenders individually. After an accurate account of the act 
comes the explanation of the wrong in the case. Writing 
answers to the question "Why is such an act wrong.?" 
brings a child to view the consequences, present and future. 
It must be remembered that the consequences are twofold, 

— to himself and to the school ; his answer must not be 
accepted until he states the results upon both. Having 

47 



MORAL TRAINING 

clearly in mind the evil results of the act, the offender is 
ready for the question, " What can I do about it ? " This 
is the essential step in the process, and if the child says he 
will see to it that it shall not occur again, and sees a way 
of escape from doing it in the future, and if the teacher is 
sure that the child knows what all this means, then his 
paper and plan must be accepted with the hearty assurance 
that the teacher is glad and ready to help him. 

The timid teacher objects, and says, ''Suppose the child 
will not worry ? " There can hardly be such a case ; but if 
it should so occur, no other treatment is possible. If a 
wrongdoer will not face his deed, he cannot be reformed. 
Suppose the extreme possibility : the child refuses to write, 
or says he is not going to do anything about it. This 
seems to be a case where the teacher mtist do soinctJimg. 
In reality it is the case where he can do nothing, except 
announce this fact. The teacher might say, "If you are 
not in harmony with what you ought to be and with the 
rest of the school, you are out by your own choice, and that 
ends it." And so it does as far as the teacher is concerned. 
One can hardly imagine a child who would not at once 
wonder what to do, and go to thinking. 

In cases where the child says he does not know what to do, 
the teacher must help by question and suggestion. Three 
cautions need to be always in the mind of the teacher : 

I . The cunning frailty and common device of man is to 
divert the attention from the real issue when caught in a 
fault. In this case the teacher's function is the same as in 
the recitation. He must help the child hold firmly and 
successfully to the subject under discussion. This is real 
moral control. 

48 



IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS 

2. There is no need for hurry. Teachers overestimate the 
importance of the prescribed work as over against this work 
called discipline ; this should take precedence over every- 
thing else. It is well if the child can complete the process 
in a moment, but it must not be dropped until it is com- 
pleted, even if it takes a whole day, or days. The offender 
should at once know that he must solve this personal 
problem before he undertakes anything else. 

3. The process is not finished until the child plans a way 
of doing right the next time in a similar situation that 
might suggest the wrong. In general this consists in 
selecting and fixing a suggestion to inhibition, or providing 
a line of action occupying consciousness so that the old 
suggestion is inoperative. In nine cases out of ten the 
child will work this out successfully. In the other case he 
needs help and careful instruction and supervision. 

Suppose the child outlines the reform process correctly, 
says he understands the case, sees why his act was wrong, 
and, having planned a way of escape for the future, does 
not escape, but repeats the deed. This might be from either 
of three causes : he did not understand the case, he did 
not will to be good, or habit is his master. Now he has 
the additional problem of discovering which is the cause 
and planning accordingly. He must give sound evidence 
of sincerity and determination, and then receive sympathetic 
help and approval. 

Socializing the school as an institution. A child's moral 
standards in action are essentially those of his compeers 
and associates. Moral training must appeal to and use 
these standards. The teacher cannot appeal to standards 
very much above those of the community. This implies 

49 



MORAL TRAINING 

that the teacher is bound to know the school district and 
raise the moral standard where it is low. The school effort 
must receive the hearty support of the family and society 
as represented by the community. To cooperate efficiently 
the school and the home must be better acquainted. The 
present situation demands that the school be made the 
social center for juvenile activities. The school equipment, 
yards, pictures, books, and all pertaining to the school, belong 
to the people. What reason other than tradition is there 
for using this costly plant but five hours a day, five days a 
week, and ten months a year } Man is a social animal ; the 
saloon and the club owe their power and fascination to this 
fact. From these the child is rightly excluded. Is there 
any good reason why the school plant should not be used 
for social intercourse of such a character that the children 
might take part in it ? The monthly concerts by the chil- 
dren may provide a social motive for drill in music. The 
task of practice on musical instruments might be enlivened 
by the social motive to play in the school orchestra. The 
dramatic instinct will insure an exercise as good as the cheap 
theater, and with infinitely better results. Exhibits, games, 
many forms of social gatherings will suggest themselves to 
the school anxious to correlate its moral forces with those of 
the family and community. We have the peculiar method 
of observing holidays (holy days) by suspending school 
activities. On these days many go to the races, games, 
theaters. A part of these gala days might with profit be 
given to games between schools, or between classes of the 
same school, inviting the community. 

Education, then, aims by means of social stimulus, guid- 
ance, and control, to help the child to grow into a well- 

50 



IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS 

rounded human being. Communities and social groups have 
instituted schools for the purpose of furnishing conditions 
favorable to this growth. The school realizes this purpose 
by providing suitable situations for the appropriate exercise 
of the essential functions of conscious life. Conscious life 
is an organic complex, sensitive and responsive to nature 
and society. The whole — nature, society, and the child — 
is a progressive moral order developing according to inher- 
ent laws and principles. Education is the progressive de- 
velopment of the child in response to the order in nature 
and society. The result of this adjustment of individual 
life to the order of nature and society is a moral person. 

Morality cannot be added to or subtracted from human 
life. It is its essence. Moral training is not put into a 
school by giving it a special period on the daily programme. 
This would seem to be evidence that there are periods 
when morality is not present. Moral training is not omitted 
in school because not named in the course of study ; but 
the highest types of manhood and womanhood are developed 
only in schools where every subject and every exercise 
is inspired and guided by a high moral purpose. The edu- 
cational problem, then, is ethical from center to circumfer- 
ence. The child, as a self -activity, is its center. It is a 
moral being. The rest of the universe is the environ- 
mental means of the child's education. It, too, is an august 
moral order. Moral training brings this unfolding child of 
God into progressive adjustment with the moral order of 
the universe by the knowledge of the truth. This is Jesus' 
formula for freedom. He has proved to be the greatest 
moral lever in history. He is raising the race in morality 
not so much by rule or maxim as by developing insight into 

51 



MORAL TRAINING 

the worth and dignity of the individual Hfe, and also by 
leading man to accept his method of developing the greatest 
worth by social service. The educator's purest inspiration, 
as well as his greatest reward, is the abiding consciousness 
that he is actively and intelligently cooperating with the high- 
est and holiest powers of the world in producing its noblest 
product, — the free moral agent. The teacher's sustain- 
ing and guiding principle in this labor of love is the thought 
that he and his pupil individually and jointly achieve this 
freedom by joyous obedience to the laws of life discovered 
by whole-souled allegiance to the highest ideal. 

Charles Edward Rugh 
Principal of Bay School 
Oakland, California 



52 



II 



THE NECESSITY FOR MORAL TRAINING IN THE 
PUBLIC SCHOOLS 

THIS necessity must be judged in view of the nature 
and purpose of the pubhc schools. 

A public school is not a charity. Its direct object is not 
the benefit of the children. If it were, attendance, like 
accepting alms, would involve some loss of self-respect. 
. A public school, moreover, is not merely a form of co- 
operative or communal action on the part of parents, based 
on the fact that a number of families can educate their 
children more efficiently and more cheaply in a joint or 
common school than they can by acting independently of 
each other. If this were the basis of public education, 
school taxes ought in justice to be assessed only on prop- 
erty owners who have children to be taught. The fact 
that all property must contribute to the school funds in 
equal proportion proves that the true ground of public edu- 
cation must be found elsewhere. The school does not stand 
simply in loco parentis to the child, and therefore the parent 
is not the only and final arbiter as to what shall be taught 
to his children. 

A public school is a school established by the state 
or nation^ to train the children of the nation for the 

1 The words " state " and " nation " will be used interchangeably in this 
essay as denoting the civil society, and without reference to the distinction 
between our states and the general government. When the word "state " is 
used of a state in the American Union it will be printed with a capital letter. 

53 



MORAL TRAINING 

responsibilities and duties of citizenship. In a republic, 
where all the people participate in the government, an igno- 
rant and untrained citizenship is a public peril. The nation 
therefore undertakes the work of public education in the 
exercise of its inherent right of self-preservation. The Latin 
maxim, saliLs popiili sttprema lex — the safety of the people 
is the supreme law — affords the true ground for any sys- 
tem of public schools. What is necessary in the public 
schools must therefore be judged necessary with regard 
to the existence and welfare of the nation. 

Is moral training necessary on this ground in the public 
schools } 

I . The moral pozvers are an essential part of huma7i nature 
and cannot, therefore, be ignored in any adequate plan of 
public education. None will deny that man is a moral being. 
The power to discern between right and wrong, and the sense 
of moral obligation constitute the chief distinction between 
man and the lower orders of being. The man in whom the 
moral sense is wanting is a defective and abnormal man. 

But the interests of the republic require that all her 
citizens, as far as possible, be normal and perfect men. 
There is no human faculty which may not at any time be 
called into the service of the state. And since conscience, 
or the sense of duty, is an essential human faculty, it can- 
not be consistently ignored in the training of the citizen. 

We accept the application of this argument to other 
human powers. The nation has need of the physical 
powers of her people in subduing the wilderness, in culti- 
vating and gathering the annual harvests, in increasing the 
national wealth, in accomplishing public improvements, and 
in resisting the ravages of disease. Therefore, that the 

^ 54 



IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS 

physical tasks of the nation may be wrought successfully, 
and that the physical strength of the nation may not de- 
cline in successive generations, the study of physiology 
and physical exercises are properly embraced in public- 
school education. The state has still greater need of intel- 
ligence and mental power in her citizens, and her schools 
are properly adjusted to meet this need. By the same 
reasoning it appears that since the moral faculties are also 
a part of human nature they ought to be contemplated in 
any system of public education, and the school system 
which fails at this point is defective and incomplete. 

But our argument rises easily to higher ground than this. 
Not only is conscience, or the moral sense, one among other 
faculties of man, but it is the most important faculty, be- 
cause it is the regulative faculty, and on its right action 
depends the right and beneficent action of all the other 
faculties. All education increases or multiplies power. But 
why should we increase power unless we also provide for 
the wise and beneficent use of that power } We teach a 
child to write. In so doing we enlarge his powers. But if 
he employs that acquisition of power in forging his neigh- 
bor's signature with fraudulent intent, it would have been 
better for himself and better for the community if he had 
never learned to write. Or as Rufus King, the lawyer, said 
in the celebrated school case in Cincinnati : "Why should 
I be taxed to educate my neighbor's child if the education 
you give him only makes the little rascal twice as sharp, 
without any additional protection to my throat .? " 

2. For the service which the nation demands of her citi- 
zens^ moral qtcalifications are of paramount importance. 
There are four great tasks which are regularly devolved 

55 



MORAL TRAINING 

upon American citizens, each one of which illustrates the 
paramount necessity for moral qualifications. These tasks 
are (i) to give testimony in courts of justice, (2) to serve 
as jurors, (3) to vote at elections, (4) to hold ofhce when 
elected. For the due discharge of these civil duties intelli- 
gence and a measure of mental training are imperatively 
necessary. Public justice is absolutely dependent on intel- 
ligent testimony from the witnesses in court ; without 
intelligence and the ability to weigh evidence the juror is 
incompetent and valueless ; without mental training how 
can the citizens judge of the questions at issue on election 
day and of the merits and claims of parties and candidates ? 
Nor can even the humblest office, much less the higher, be 
filled to the advantage of the people by men who arc igno- 
rant and untrained. The state docs well to educate intel- 
lectually her whole people in order that these civil duties 
may be well performed. But if intelligence and mental 
culture are necessary in these premises, is it not self-evident 
that moral principle and moral character are infinitely more 
important ? What avails the intelligence of the witness if 
he purposely gives false testimony .? or any mental training 
of the juror if he knowingly brings in an unjust verdict ? or 
of the voter if he sells his vote ? or of the officeholder if 
he is incapable of being bound by his oath of office .? The 
education which has not instructed the citizen in these 
moral obligations, and developed his moral sense to be 
conscious of their supremacy, has not fitted him for the 
responsibilities of citizenship. 

3. T/ie evils fi'om which the natio7i suffers most, mid the 
dangers which she chiefly dreads, are moral evils a7id dan- 
gers. To a certain extent we fear and suffer from physical 

56 



IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS 

or material ills. Poverty, sickness, the operation of natural 
forces such as fire and flood, the earthquake and the thun- 
derbolt, excite the apprehensions of all, and it is the mani- 
fest duty of government to guard the people, as far as pos- 
sible, against these ills. Hence public education is wisely 
adapted to assist man's mastery of the forces of nature ; 
to teach the people to use these forces and bend them to 
their service, — to harness the waters to their burdens and 
train the lightnings to carry their messages. But to every 
thoughtful mind the ravages of vice and crime are im- 
measurably more detrimental to human happiness and wel- 
fare than are all other causes of loss and suffering. When 
we think of the misery entailed by these moral evils upon the 
innocent, as well as of the retributions visited upon the guilty ; 
of the tears shed by parents over filial ingratitude and dis- 
obedience ; of the lives destroyed by dissipation as well as 
by the hand of violence ; of the homes ruined by adultery 
and seduction and of the murders which so often follow ; 
of the shames and miseries, the social pollutions, and the 
consequences to children often involved in even one divorce 
case, and of the fearful aggregate of these evils involved in 
the tens of thousands of divorce cases which pass through 
our courts in a single year ; when we consider our occasional 
exposures of social, commercial, and political corruption, and 
ask ourselves, '' If these things appear on the surface, what 
must the depths conceal?" — we must admit that the whole 
sum of human suffering caused by physical agencies is not 
worthy to be named in comparison with the results of our 
moral evils. Moreover, our physical ills are, in large meas- 
ure, traceable ultimately to moral causes, being the retribu- 
tion which follows sin under the moral government of God. 

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MORAL TRAINING 

Moral corruption, when it becomes widespread, threatens the 
very existence of governments and nations. The nations 
which have perished in the past have perished because of 
their vices and crimes. It is not written that any nation 
ever perished through mere material calamities. 

How, then, can a nation most effectually combat the 
moral evils and dangers which beset and threaten her } 
Not by force ; mere force has no place on these moral 
battlefields. Methods of repression which consist chiefly 
in the application of force tend rather to spread and inten- 
sify moral evils. Moral evils can be combated only by 
moral forces. Every moral evil grows up out of some 
falsehood, and the only instrument with which to extirpate 
it is truth. In her system of public schools, reaching to 
every hamlet and gathering the children from every home, 
holding them under instruction during the plastic and forma- 
tive period of youth, the state has an incomparable agency 
for resisting and destroying the moral evils which threaten 
her life and welfare. It was long since a German maxim, 
" What you would have appear in the life of a nation you 
must put into its schools." An American educator has 
said, "The school is society shaping itself." These maxims 
and these arguments point to the same conclusion, — that 
if these moral evils are to disappear from the life of the 
nation, and if American society is to "shape itself" into 
a purer and nobler national character, it must be through 
the agency of public education devoted definitely and of set 
purpose to the moral training of our citizens. 

4. It is the imquestionable right and the imperative duty 
of the nation to perpettiate her moral character by training 
her citizens into that character. A nation's right to transmit 

58 



IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS 

her actual character to the nation of the future by impress- 
ing that character on the coming generation is one of 
the undisputed principles of statesmanship. Every nation 
does it in many different ways, — by the institutions she 
estabhshes, and which tend to perpetuate themselves ; by 
the monuments she sets up and the inscriptions she places 
upon them ; by her instruments of government and state 
papers and by the sentiments they contain. She could not 
avoid exercising this molding power even if she would. 
And if she may do so in these other ways, then still more 
may she do so in the most pervasive and efficient of all 
ways, — through her public schools. 

We do this constantly, zealously, as to our republicanism. 
In season and out of season, through all our channels of 
influence upon the minds of the people, we inculcate the 
superiority of repubhcan institutions. Nor do we hesitate 
because some of our own citizens, or of our immigrant popu- 
lation, may possibly have differing convictions. We feel, we 
know, that we no more wrong or injure a monarchist who 
may be resident among us by teaching our republicanism 
than we do by being republican ; we have the same right to 
inculcate the superiority of our form of government that 
we have to establish it. 

Now the American nation has a certain well-defined 
moral character. It is not a perfect character ; it is still in 
process of development ; but, in so far as we have a moral 
character, with certain well-defined features, we have the 
right to train the generation that is coming after us to 
believe in and to practice the virtues which compose it. 
The moral character of this nation includes such traits as 
these : obedience to law, regard for the rights of men, love 

59 



MORAL TRAINING 

of liberty, regard for the sanctity of oaths, respect for the 
monogamous family, abhorrence of drunkenness and of 
social vice, public faith or the keeping of treaties and com- 
pacts, and respect for the day of rest and worship. That 
multitudes among us are not possessed of these virtues, and 
that the people as a whole, through their State and national 
governments, have often disregarded them, is no objection 
to our argument. The fact remains that these virtues are 
commanded in our laws, they are enforced in our courts, 
they have wrought as vital forces in our history, they have 
given tone to our literature, and the nation believes they 
lie at the foundation of our national prosperity. We rightly 
deem them of supreme importance ; we could better allow 
all our wealth, the accumulation of centuries of toil and 
self-denial, to perish in one fell disaster than allow ourselves 
to be robbed of these elements in our moral character as a 
nation. Whether we shall in years to come be a numerous 
people, — reckoning our population by hundreds of millions, 
— or a wealthy people, or a learned and scholarly people, 
or a refined people adorned with the graces of intellectual 
and aesthetic culture, are all of infinitely less importance 
than the question whether we shall be a virtuous, law-abid- 
ing, incorruptible. God-fearing, faith-keeping people. The 
foundation of all public welfare is the virtue of the people ; 
this has been the chief factor, heretofore, in our national 
welfare and progress. If we lose this, and become pre- 
vailingly a corrupt and vicious people, nothing can sus- 
tain the fabric of our unparalleled material prosperity and 
our general social happiness. Possessing a certain well- 
defined moral character, and having these convictions as to 
its importance, the nation has the unquestionable right, 

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IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS 

and is under the most solemn obligations, to train her 
future citizens in that moral character and in those under- 
lying principles in which our national morality has its roots 
and out of which it springs. 

The force of this argument is greatly enhanced with the 
American people when we consider the heterogeneous mul- 
titudes of immigrants who are flocking to our shores. Last 
year we received from foreign countries an addition of 
1,026,499 persons to our population. Some of these bring 
strength and help to the best forces in our national life. 
All who are refugees from oppression and from burdensome 
social conditions abroad we cordially welcome, even though 
we know that many of them are not in accord with the 
distinctive moral features of our national character. Many 
of them antagonize laws designed to elevate the character 
and improve the morals of the people. Their attitude 
makes slower and more difficult the uplift and moral 
progress of the whole nation. 

As we face this problem, it is clear that among the 
agencies which the nation can employ directly, the public 
school must be our main reliance. The adult immigrant 
will not be easily or quickly changed ; his habits are fixed ; 
his opinions have crystallized ; but his children, in their 
formative years, go into the pubUc school, there to be 
assimilated to the national character. If the most impor- 
tant elements in our national character are moral elements, 
then our pubUc schools must give a foremost place to the 
moral elements in education. We plant ourselves on the 
unassailable principle that every nation has the unquestion- 
able right and is bound by the highest duty to transmit 
to future generations those elements in her own moral 

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MORAL TRAINING 

character which she deems dutiful and vakiable, and which 
she would preserve and develop. 

Again, our argument rises easily and naturally to still 
higher ground when we consider our fifth point. 

5. Every nation has the right and is in duty bound to 
lift her moral character toward still higher standards. She 
has no right to be content with the simple transmission of 
her character as it exists at any given period in her history. 
In the remedial dispensation under which we live, it is 
man's privilege and duty to strive ever toward perfection. 
This is as true of man socially as of each individual 
man. Every nation ought to be able to say, "One thing 
I do ; forgetting the things which are behind, and stretch- 
ing forward to the things which are before, I press on 
toward the goal," — of moral perfection. To this end, — 
the production of a nobler race, — a nation's laws and 
her courts, her activities and her aspirations, her struggles 
and her conflicts, ought all to be consciously and purposely 
directed. All her material successes and enrichments ought 
to be held and used as means to this higher end. The 
natural desire of parents that it may be better with their 
children than it has been with themselves finds in this 
moral progress of the nation its highest and worthiest 
fulfillment. The philanthropist's hopes for mankind rest 
largely on the hope that all nations will yet, one after 
another, accept the moral improvement of their people as 
the one goal toward which all will strive in generous emu- 
lation and with self-denying devotion. But in this noblest 
of all national enterprises the nation has at command no 
instrument, no agency, which for wide extent and for 
efficiency can be compared with the public schools. 

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IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS 

We have a fine example of a nation's aspiration and 
effort toward the moral uplifting of her people in the scien- 
tific temperance instruction laws now to be found on the 
statute books of every State in the American Union. In 
this way, through the action of their legislatures and their 
public schools, the American people are striving to free 
themselves in future years from the curse of drink. Stand- 
ing calmly on the ground of facts scientifically ascertained, 
and making these facts the content of her instruction, the 
nation is not deterred by the differing opinions of many of 
her citizens, nor by the opposition of some parents to the 
teaching of these facts to their children, nor by the clamor 
of interests which may be adversely affected by the results 
of such instruction. Already the beneficent results of this 
wise legislation are apparent in the fife of the nation. Is it 
not then the highest wisdom of statesmanship to proceed 
further along this line, to attack other moral evils with the 
same weapons, and to sweep the whole field of ascertained 
knowledge in the search for arguments wherewith to en- 
force such moral instruction } 

On the strength of these five arguments the necessity 
of moral training for the citizen in the public schools is 
securely established, unless this manifest need can be sup- 
plied as well from some other source. To break the force 
of these arguments, however, it is claimed that the family 
and the church are the proper agencies for the moral train- 
ing of children, and that the training received at their hands 
is sufficient for the needs of the state. 

It is freely granted that the family is under a grave 
responsibility for the moral training of its children, as is 
also the church ; but since the state, as well as the church 

63 



MORAL TRAINING 

and the family, is an independent and divinely instituted 
society, has she not her own independent responsibility 
and her own unquestionable rights ? May she do nothing 
toward the moral training of her own citizens ? We have 
seen, in a previous paragraph, that she cannot avoid 
this training if she would. She cannot enact laws and 
punish crime without educating in morals the people who 
are under these laws. And what she does thus indirectly, 
has she not the right to do directly in her public schools .? 
If she undertakes the work of education at all, may she 
not give a complete, well-rounded education, and train the 
whole man, with all his powers, for her service ? 

Besides, how many children there are who are destitute 
of any proper family training, — the children of criminals, 
of vicious and broken homes, orphan children, and children 
whose lot is worse than orphanage ! How many families 
there are which have no connection with the church, and 
whose children receive no training in her Sabbath schools 
or her sanctuaries ! Can the state do nothing to pro- 
vide against the public danger involved in such facts as 
these .? 

Under the American doctrine of the separation of 
church and state, the state ought not to lean directly on 
the church for anything which is vital to her life and wel- 
fare. If the state is to depend on the church for the moral 
training of her citizens, then she must depend on all 
churches alike, on the Mormons with their teaching in favor 
of polygamy, and on every other so-called church, however 
nondescript or forbidding, and even on the atheist, whose 
faith, or want of faith, develops naturally and logically into 
anarchy. Amid all this confusion has the American nation 

64 



IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS 

no moral code, with adequate sanctions to support it, which 
she can teach authoritatively to all her future citizens ? 

The true doctrine is, that the need is so great, and the 
peril from neglect or failure is so urgent, that all the forms 
of human society, — the family, the church, and the state, — 
must work together to supply the need and avert the peril. 
Each of these is free to do its work without dictation or 
interference from either of the others. The family and the 
church will do well if they discharge their own responsibili- 
ties. They must not be asked to undertake, in addition, the 
responsibilities of the state. 

The conclusions thus far reached may be compactly stated 
thus : Public schools are established to prepare the citizens 
for the duties of citizenship. Right moral character is the 
chief element in good citizenship ; the life and welfare of 
the nation are dependent upon it. This element cannot be 
adequately supplied from any other source ; therefore the 
public schools must regard moral training as a principal 
part of their work. 

THE RELIGIOUS DIFFICULTY IN THE UNITED 
STATES; VARIOUS PROPOSED SOLUTIONS 

The religious difficulty in the way of moral training in 
the public schools arises from the connection of morality 
with religion. The general moral character of the American 
people has been determined by the religious ideas which 
have prevailed among the people. These religious ideas are 
not the possession of any one church, but are common to 
all churches, and are shared by multitudes who belong to no 
church. They include such primary religious tenets as belief 

65 



MORAL TRAINING 

in the being of God ; the character of God as infinitely holy, 
just, loving, and merciful ; the moral law as the expression 
of his will ; the certainty of sin's punishment ; the coming of 
a Saviour who died for men, and the offer of forgiveness 
and of eternal life. These beliefs have made us the kind of 
people we are : they have molded our individual character, 
and have given form to our laws and other institutions. If 
we had been a Mohammedan people, all our laws respecting 
the family would have been different from what they are ; 
so our laws against blasphemy, laws relating to the day of 
rest, guarding the sacredness of human life, restraining 
licentiousness, providing for public charities, with many 
others, would never have been enacted by a people influ- 
enced by any other than the Christian religion. 

The Christian people of the United States, however, are 
divided into various churches or sects. These are naturally 
rivals and are jealous of each other. A large part of the 
population belong to no church and profess no religion. 
Hence arises the fear that the state, in teaching morality 
in the schools, together with the logical basis on which 
morality rests, may throw the weight of her influence and 
authority in favor of some one sect to the disadvantage or 
disparagement of the others. 

The fear is natural. It is based largely upon the wrongs, 
oppressions, and cruelties which have been perpetrated in 
other lands and in other days in behalf of churches ''estab- 
lished " by the civil power. The American people will not 
lightly surrender their religious liberties, purchased with a 
great price, or allow themselves to be " entangled again in 
the yoke of bondage" to ecclesiastical despotism. In all 
our discussions we must hold this to be common ground on 

66 



IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS 

which all parties stand and which all will equally, and at 
any cost, defend. 

Various solutions of the educational problem have been 
proposed in order to escape the religious difficulty. 



I. The Secular Theory of Public Education 

The advocates of this theory say : The American people 
are agreed as to the importance of intellectual and physical 
culture, but they are hopelessly divided in their religious 
opinions. The only possible course of action, therefore, is 
to put into the schools those things about which they are 
agreed and to leave out the things about which they differ. 
Let all religious ideas, even the most elementary, be barred 
from the schoolroom. Morality may be taught, but only as a 
system of human conventions, and no argument enforcing 
it may be drawn from the realm of religion. The evils 
which are condemned must be condemned because of the 
injury they bring to man and not because they are sins 
against God. 

To this theory there are several invincible objections : 
I . // does not take into account the religious nature of the 
child. Man is not only a moral but a religious being. His 
moral sense, or his perception of right and wrong, is 
directly related to his belief in God. Conscience is the 
sense of duty, but duty implies some one to whom duty is 
due. If there is no moral governor over man, man's own 
will is his supreme law. It is difficult to see how there can 
be any sense of moral obligation in a mind which really 
denies the being of God. Conscience, or the moral sense, 
is therefore related to God much as the eye is related to 

67 



MORAL TRAINING 

light. The Christian idea of God is of a being of absolute 
goodness, immutable truth, unvarying justice, unchanging 
faithfulness, and perfect love, — as well as of infinite wis- 
dom and power. This God is our Creator, Preserver, and 
Saviour ; we stand in personal relations to him ; we love 
him, and know that he loves us. The reverent and affec- 
tionate contemplation of such a being transforms man into 
his likeness. The sense of his authority, the desire for his 
favor, the fear of his displeasure, the longing to be at one 
with him, — these are the most powerful regulative and up- 
lifting forces known to men. These sentiments have made 
the American people what they are and have made our 
institutions what they are. They are not the views of any 
one church or of church people only, but the convictions 
of the great majority of the American people. Is it wise, 
or is it necessary, for the state, in laboring to transmit her 
own character to coming generations, to ignore the chief 
forces which have wrought in the formation of that charac- 
ter } Is the moral uplifting and guidance of a great nation, 
numbering already nearly a hundred millions of souls and 
destined perhaps within a century to include from five hun- 
dred to a thousand millions, so light a task that the nation 
can afford to ignore and neglect the chief instrument for its 
accomplishment .? In endeavoring to impress her own moral- 
ity upon her future citizens, may the nation make no account 
of the very soil into which that morality has sent down its 
roots and from which it has drawn its nourishment ? 

2. T/iis theoiy ignores the moral a7id religions nature of 
the state. The state itself is a moral being, capable of doing 
right and of doing wrong, and is bound by the moral law. 
Under the moral government of God nations are punished 

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IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS 

for their sins and are rewarded for right character and con- 
duct. A nation defines crime and forbids and punishes it. 
The questions she must constantly decide are moral ques- 
tions, questions of peace or war, of justice or oppression, of 
the moral welfare or corruption of the people. How can 
the citizen, either a voter or a ruler, decide wisely or rightly 
such questions as these unless he is possessed of a moral 
sense and has been trained to exercise it .? The man who 
does not know God and fear him is as incompetent and help- 
less amid the tasks of citizenship as a navigator who could 
see neither his compass nor the stars. The bald secular 
theory of education is the logical correlate of the secular 
theory of civil government, which is practically political 
atheism. 

3. Education molded by this theory would not be neutral 
but would be positively hostile to religion. The fairness of 
this proposal is insisted on as its chief recommendation. 
To banish all religious ideas from the schools, it is claimed, 
is perfectly fair, and, in fact, is the only fair course as be- 
tween Roman Catholic and Protestant, Jew and Christian, 
believer and unbeliever. This is very plausible, but it will 
not bear examination. 

Consider the effect on the mind of a child of a course of 
school training from which all, even the simplest, religious 
ideas are excluded. He sees himself one of a vast army 
which is passing through the schools to be prepared for 
the duties of citizenship. He sees that the state has made 
costly provision for this training, — spacious buildings, 
capable teachers, and all the appliances for thorough and 
rapid instruction. By all these tokens he perceives that the 
state is much concerned for his intellectual culture but is 

69 



MORAL TRAINING 

wholly indifferent to his religious character ; is resolved 
that he shall know the rules of grammar and arithmetic but 
does not care whether he believes in God or knows or 
believes in the Ten Commandments. What is this but to 
deny the value of religious truth in the sphere of citizen- 
ship ; to disparage it in comparison with other branches of 
knowledge ; to deny that the state itself has any relation to 
God, since the citizen needs no knowledge of God in the 
discharge of his duties as a citizen ? And what is this but 
positive teaching against religion and a positive lesson in 
political atheism ? And this lesson is given to the child by 
the state, that majestic personage toward which the child 
begins to feel the sentiment of loyalty stirring in his bosom, 
which opens before him the loftiest fields for his ambition 
and holds before him the great prizes of life as the rewards 
for his service. What must be the effect of that lesson, 
reiterated daily through all that plastic period, the school 
life of the child .? 

The impossibility of maintaining neutrality regarding re- 
ligious ideas in the work of education admits of the most 
vivid illustration. The English-speaking peoples have im- 
pressed their religious ideas upon the words of the English 
tongue. *' Right," in morals, as defined by Webster, means 
"according to the will of God " ; and that is but one word 
out of thousands which have been filled with a religious 
content by the generations who have created and used our 
language. What of the words "duty," and "conscience," 
and "sin," and "God," and "Saviour".? The child must 
be taught to attach to these words their religious mean- 
ing, if he is to understand English literature. He cannot 
empty these words of their religious significance and then 

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IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS 

understand Shakespeare, or Milton, or Tennyson, in passages 
where these words are found. The same is true of history. 
American history cannot be taught truthfully without going 
back to its sources in the great Reformation of the sixteenth 
century and in the great religious questions which then 
agitated the souls of men. The government of the school 
presents the same difficulty. On what ground shall the 
teacher repress profanity .? Because it is wicked, or merely 
because it is vulgar .? And if a child asks, "Why do we have 
Thanksgiving Day?" the teacher is brought face to face 
with a body of religious truth which he can neither ignore 
nor refuse to impart without virtually denying it and 
teaching its opposite. 

4. The secular programme of education does not meet the 
needs of the nation. The nation needs a law-abiding citizen- 
ship, a people who will yield obedience to the laws, not 
merely as a matter of compulsion or to avoid their penalties, 
but for conscience' sake. To prepare for such obedience, 
the citizen must not only know the law but must know and 
approve the reasons which underlie the law. But the main 
reason which underlies many of our laws is a religious 
reason ; for example, our laws against blasphemy and per- 
jury are based on the reverence due to the name of God. 
Underneath many other laws, in support of which various 
reasons may be adduced, there is a religious reason which 
no candid student of the origin of laws will deny, and 
which no earnest teacher of the law will wish to ignore. 
This is true of laws which protect the day of rest and 
worship, which uphold the authority of parents over their 
children, which defend the monogamous family and repress 
licentiousness, and of those which guard the right and the 

71 



MORAL TRAINING 

freedom of the people to worship God. To secure a law- 
abiding people, in the deeper sense of the word, it is neces- 
sary to teach not only the letter of the law but the religious 
principles in which the roots of these laws are found. 

The American people, in devising their system of govern- 
ment, have chosen the oath as the safeguard of the most 
important interests of society. With the exception of treas- 
urers, who furnish a financial bond, we require no other 
bond or guaranty from any officer, from the President of 
the United States down to the village constable, that he 
will perform faithfully the duties of his office. In our courts 
of justice, where the most precious interests are constantly 
drawn into controversy, we suspend all these interests on 
the efficacy of the oath as a means of searching the mind 
of witnesses. The word '^ juror" means, literally, one who 
swears. Even the soldier may not put on the uniform of 
his country or lift his hand to defend her flag until he has 
taken the military oath. But an oath is an appeal to God 
as witness and judge to deal with him who takes the obli- 
gation according as he speaks truly or deals faithfully in the 
matters to which the oath relates. To a man who does not 
believe in God the oath is meaningless and useless. The 
efficacy of the oath is dependent absolutely on the religious 
knowledge and convictions of the citizen. Washington, in 
his Farewell Address, insisted on this. " Where," he asked, 
"is the security for life, or property, or reputation, if the 
sense of religious obligation should desert the oaths which 
are the instruments of investigation in courts of justice ? " 
Since, then, the oath is so important an institution in the 
American government, it follows that no man is prepared 
for the duties of citizenship unless he understands the nature, 

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IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS 

and is capable of feeling the obligation, of an oath. This 
fitness involves a measure of religious knowledge and certain 
religious convictions. The secular programme of public ed- 
ucation, which would banish these ideas from the school- 
room, does not meet the needs of the nation. 

5. The secular theory of public education is not in 
harmony with American institutions. The broad, general, 
unsectarian principles of religion have been wrought deeply 
into the framework of the American government. They 
found expression in the charters and compacts of govern- 
ment in our colonial history ; they appeared as acknowl- 
edgments of Almighty God in the constitutions of the 
thirteen original States, in the Declaration of Independence, 
and in the Articles of Confederation. Similar acknowledg- 
ments are found in the constitutions of almost all our States 
to-day. These principles have determined many of the 
established usages of our government, such as prayers in 
Congress and in our State legislatures and the observance 
of our national Thanksgiving Day. They have found fre- 
quent expression in State papers, especially in times of 
public danger or calamity. We have already noted their 
influence in shaping our legislation. And as to our schools 
themselves, these principles have made our system of public 
education, generally speaking. Christian and not secular. 
The correctness of this statement is shown by the fact 
that in thirty-seven of our States the Bible is generally read 
in our public schools, — this exercise being in some States 
required by law, in others upheld by judicial decisions, and 
in still others by long-established usage and by general 
public opinion. Of the remaining States, there are five in 
which decisions of the Supreme Court or of attorneys-general 

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MORAL TRAINING 

or superintendents of education have been rendered against 
the use of the Bible, and three from which the use of the 
Bible in the schools has generally disappeared, although no 
such decisions have been given against it. In the year 1904 
the Commissioner of Education addressed inquiries to all 
cities containing a population of four thousand and over as 
to religious exercises in their public schools. Of 1098 cities 
reporting, 818 reported that the Bible was read and 827 
reported that prayer was offered either by the teacher or in 
concert by the class. These facts, and such as these, are 
the basis of the memorable decision of the Supreme Court 
of the United States (February 29, 1892) that "this is a 
Christian nation." The secular theory of education is, 
therefore, an attempt to throw our educational system out 
of harmony with our national character and with the general 
character of our institutions. A theory so subversive of 
much that is oldest and best established in our national life 
cannot be accepted as a solution of the religious difficulty 
in the work of education. 



II. The Parochial School supported from the 
Public Funds 

This is the solution proposed by our Roman Catholic 
fellow-citizens and by a few smaller bodies. They insist on 
religion as an indispensable element in all true education, 
and they claim that since they have established schools to 
give both secular and religious instruction, and have relieved 
the state of the burden of educating their children, they 
ought to receive, for the support of these schools, a share of 
the whole fund raised by the state for educational purposes. 

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IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS 

They make this appeal on the ground of justice and fair 
play, and they expect it some day to be granted. 

There are two reasons which ought to forbid the accept- 
ance of this proposal : 

1. The first is, that if state support for ecclesiastical 
schools be granted to any one church it must necessarily, 
in time, be granted to all. Other churches would be quick 
to perceive the sectarian advantages which would lie in the 
possession of ecclesiastical schools supported out of public 
funds. Sooner or later our public-school system would be 
split up into more than a hundred rival sectarian systems, 
competing for the patronage of the people and actuated by 
the inevitable jealousies and hatreds which such a situation 
would evoke. All sects — Spiritualists, Mormons, infidels, 
and what not — would claim their share of the public funds 
and would establish their own separate systems of educa- 
tion. The first and chief aim of all these systems would be 
to make not good citizens but devoted members of their 
respective sects. All that sense of unity and that power 
that waits upon concerted action, which have been factors 
in our splendid educational progress, would disappear, and 
the noble system of our public education, built up at the 
cost of so much labor and study and public treasure through 
successive generations, would perish. 

2. Our second argument against the proposed division 
of the school fund among the sects would be that under 
such an arrangement the state would really cease to edu- 
cate and would become a mere taxgatherer, passing over 
the funds which she would collect to the church to be used 
in her ecclesiastical schools. It would therefore be a virtual 
union of church and state. It would be more simple and 

75 



MORAL TRAINING 

consistent for the state to wash her hands of the whole 
business and leave it to the churches to create and manage 
their own systems and find the means of their support. 
That the American people can ever be brought to accept 
such a proposal, with its obvious and inevitable conse- 
quences, does not seem to be possible. 

III. That the Public Schools be purely Secular, 

BUT BE interrupted AT StATED TiMES FOR RELI- 
GIOUS Instruction by Ministers, Priests, 
OR Other Religious Teachers 

This proposal is made in two forms, — one that the 
children be gathered into different rooms in the school 
building for this purpose, and the other that the public 
schools be closed, say one afternoon in each week, and the 
children be gathered in their respective churches for reli- 
gious instruction. That this plan is not only impracticable 
but rests on faulty and mistaken principles will appear 
from the following considerations : 

I . This plan ivonld restrict to a single afternoon in the 
week a ivork ivhich ought to he contimions. The effort to 
form right moral character on the basis of right principles 
ought to pervade the whole atmosphere of the schoolroom 
during all the days of the week. It ought to be always 
present to the mind of the teacher and should influence all 
his work. The government and discipline of the school 
should be directed to this end. History, literature, science, 
all afford lessons conducive to it. The authoritative segre- 
gation of moral and religious lessons into a single session, 
to be given by different instructors, would operate as an 

76 



IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS 

interdict against such instruction from the regular instruc- 
tors at any other hour. 

2. Under this plan the state would abdicate the most 
imp07iant part of the work of education^ confessing her 
incompetence or inabihty to discharge it. The instruction 
given at this special session would not be civil but ecclesi- 
astical instruction. The state would have no control over 
it. It would be primarily in the interest of the churches 
and not of the state, and the authority and influence of the 
state would not be behind it. If the state has any respon- 
sibility for the moral character of her citizens she should 
frankly recognize that responsibility and endeavor cour- 
ageously and faithfully to discharge it. 

3. This 'inoral and religious instruction zvoiild, conse- 
quently, be inefficient. Attendance would be voluntary, or 
such as the influence and authority of parents and religious 
guides could secure. Large numbers of children would not 
attend at all. The teachers would not be men and women 
specially and professionally trained for their task, and 
qualified by the experience and skill which come with con- 
tinuous service. The elements of authority and system 
and harmonious cooperation which secure efficiency in the 
public school would be wholly wanting in these diverse and 
fragmentary religious schools. 

4. This division of the public school into religious groups 
once a week, to be taught and drilled in their respective 
creeds and observances by their religious leaders, would 
hitroduce sectarian oppositions and rivalries and jealoiisies 
into the schools, to the detriment of the nation. It would 
transfer these from the ecclesiastical sphere, where surely 
they have wrought mischief enough, to the civil sphere, 

77 



MORAL TRAINING 

where they have no business whatever. Instead of teach- 
ing our children that there is a common ground in matters 
of rehgion and morals on which they can come together as 
citizens, it would teach them that there is no such ground, 
that there are no religious ideas which are common to them 
as citizens of one country and no religious acts or exercises 
which they can perform together. It would tend to crystal- 
lize, and perpetuate, and exaggerate all religious differences, 
so that not only the church but the nation would be con- 
sciously and obviously divided into sects. This proposal is 
little less offensive and mischievous than the proposal to 
abolish the public schools and to divide the school funds 
absolutely among the sects for the support of sectarian 
schools. 

5 . This plan makes no provisio7i for the large class of 
children zvhose parents have no connection ivith any churchy 
and zvho are in the greatest need of such iiistriiction. 

Thus various proposed solutions of the religious difficulty 
have been examined. Each one appears to be confronted 
with insuperable objections. We turn in conclusion to what 
seems to us to be the true and adequate solution. 



THE TRUE AND ADEQUATE SOLUTION 

The solution which is proposed in these remaining pages 
is not perhaps an ideal solution, suited to an ideal state of 
society. It is offered as a practical and adequate solution 
of the difficulties which pertain to the situation at the 
present time in the United States. 

This solution, in the presence of which the religious 
difficulty resolves itself and disappears, may be stated in 

78 



IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS 

these words : Let the State teach in her pubHc schools the 
system of morahty which is embodied in her own laws, 
with such sanctions as the rehgious character of the State 
herself supplies. In so far as the State has a moral char- 
acter, that character will be found expressed in her laws, 
and these laws, with the reasons which support them, the 
State may and ought to teach. It would not be necessary, 
in compliance with this proposal, to bring cumbrous digests 
of laws into the schoolroom. There is a broad and plain 
distinction between laws which deal with moral duties and 
are designed to cultivate and strengthen moral character, 
and the great body of laws which relate to other matters. 
The acceptance of this proposal would, of course, necessi- 
tate the preparation of manuals suitable for the purpose, 
which would be an easy matter. In support of this per- 
fectly intelligible and practical proposal, that the laws of 
the State and the reasons for them be taught in the public 
schools, the following arguments are offered : 

I . This proposal is natural and reasonable. If the primary 
virtue of the citizen, as a citizen, is obedience to law, how 
reasonable that the State should direct her educational 
labors to implanting the law-abiding spirit ! This can best 
be done by teaching in the pubHc schools that system 
of morals which has been wrought into the laws of the 
State, and marshaling carefully, and convincingly, the argu- 
ments which justify and sustain these laws. The mere 
teaching of the letter of the law would be of small value. 
The effort should be to convince every child of the wisdom, 
justice, necessity, and goodness of every moral law on the 
statute books of the State ; to make him feel that it is an 
evil and shameful thing to break any one of these laws ; and 

79 



MORAL TRAINING 

so to win his intelligent, resolute, and unquestioning loyalty 
to them all. Since the State proposes to punish the man 
for violating its laws, to put him to death for murder, to 
fine and imprison him for other offenses, how reasonable 
and just it is that the State shall begin with the child, and 
shall anticipate and neutralize the force of temptation by 
winning over the judgment and heart and conscience of the 
child to the side of the law, and anchoring them there by 
the power of unanswerable arguments ! It may be difficult 
to do this, but surely the reasoning necessary would be no 
more abstruse than a proposition in geometry or an arith- 
metical problem. This should be so expressly made the 
duty of all schools and of all teachers that if any child in 
after years becomes vicious or criminal the school and the 
teacher shall consider themselves to have failed with that 
child. No intellectual capacity which he may have gained, 
no material success he may afterwards win, should be 
accepted in atonement for this failure at the one point of 
supreme importance. Who can estimate the beneficent 
results which would follow if all the schools of the nation 
were devoted to the task of teaching and upholding and 
justifying the great body of just and righteous laws on our 
statute books ? 

2. This teaching would be atithoritative, not merely 
speculative, and ivould on that accoimt be more effective. 
Law is more than an appeal to reason. It is the voice of 
some competent authority commanding obedience. A father 
does well to instruct his children in the reasons which justify 
his commands ; but before instruction can begin, and while 
it is in progress, the father's commands are the expression 
of his authority. 

80 



IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS 

It is the weakness of most merely ethical teaching in 
the schoolroom that ethics are presented as mere specula- 
tions in the field of morals. Some man's system is taught, 
while every man has an equal right to a system of his own. 
The teaching of morals on no higher authority than the argu- 
ments of some author is small preparation for a lifetime of 
obedience to constituted authority. If the State teaches 
her own laws in her schools, her teaching rests on an 
authority which is positive and definite, and which will con- 
tinue over the man as long as he lives. 

3. This moral system would, in American schools, be 
remarkably full and complete. The ten all-embracing pre- 
cepts of the Decalogue have been, in the main, transferred 
to the law books of the United States. Moreover, the actual 
prohibitions of the statutes must be interpreted as forbid- 
ding, inferentially yet logically, all causes of and incite- 
ments to the commission of the crimes prohibited. The 
laws of the country, too, include the constitutions of the 
States and the nation as well as our statute laws. The 
thoughtful teacher will be surprised and dehghted to find 
what a body of material is here afforded for his use. The 
right of worshiping God, so carefully guarded in every bill 
of rights, impUes the duty of worship. Worship is a sacred 
and honorable right and duty, protected by the fundamental 
law of every State in the American Union. The third com- 
mandment is embodied in our laws, almost universal, against 
profanity and blasphemy ; the fourth commandment, in the 
laws touching the Lord's Day, found in all the States save 
two ; the fifth, in the laws which uphold the just authority 
of parents and provide prisons and reformatories for incor- 
rigibly disobedient children; the sixth, in all laws which 

81 



MORAL TRAINING 

protect human life ; the seventh, in the laws which estab- 
lish and guard the family and repress licentiousness ; the 
eighth, in laws respecting property ; the ninth, in laws 
against false witness and perjury. Besides these there is 
a body of laws relating to the nature and form of our gov- 
ernment and the duties and qualifications of officers, and 
another body of laws (the expression of that love which 
is the fulfilhng of all law) providing for public charities 
and forbidding cruelty even to animals. There is hardly 
any offense against good morals which is not, directly or 
by plain inference, forbidden by our statutes. 

4. This wouldi in the United States, as in all the world, 
allow of appeal to those religions sanctions which provide the 
highest motives for obedience. These motives are the holi- 
ness, justice, and love of God, his authority over us, grati- 
tude for his benefits, desire for his favor, and fear of his 
displeasure in the future world as well as in this. These are 
noble and legitimate motives, and the most efficacious which 
can be brought to bear upon the human mind ; and the state 
is not reaching beyond her own proper sphere, or intro- 
ducing into her education ideas which belong to the church, 
when she appeals to these motives. As Justice Brewer 
says in the decision of the Supreme Court already quoted : 

Every State constitution contains language which either directly 
or by clear implication recognizes a profound reverence for religion 
and an assumption that its influence in all human affairs is essential 
to the well-being of the community. . . . There is no dissonance in 
these declarations. There is a universal language pervading them 
all and having one meaning. They affirm and reaffirm that this is a 
religious nation. These are not individual sayings, the declarations 
of private persons. They are organic utterances. They speak the 
voice of the entire people. 

82 



IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS 

He then quotes many decisions of our courts in which 
this view is upheld, and passes to a view of the laws, usages, 
and customs of our government, noting the usual 

form of oath, concluding with an appeal to the Almighty ; the cus- 
tom of opening all legislative assemblies and most conventions with 
prayer ; the prefatory words of all wills, " In the name of God, 
Amen " ; and the laws respecting the observance of the Sabbath, 
with the general cessation of secular business and the closing of 
courts, legislatures, and other similar public assemblies on that day. 
These and many other matters which might be noticed add a volume 
of unofficial declarations to the mass of organic utterances that this 
is a Christian nation.^ 

Most of our States have gone farther than California has 
in embodying Christian principles in their fundamental and 
statutory laws ; but California prefaces her constitution with 
the words, '^ Grateful to Almighty God for our freedom," 
and in her bill of rights declares that '' the free exercise and 
enjoyment of religious profession and worship, without dis- 
crimination or preference, shall forever be secured in this 
State." The utterance of profane or indecent language in 
the hearing of women and children, in a loud and boisterous 
manner, is punishable by a fine of two hundred dollars, or 
imprisonment for ninety days, or both or either, in the dis- 
cretion of the court. Perjury is to be punished with impris- 
onment for not less than one or not more than fourteen 
years. An annual Thanksgiving Day is observed under the 
proclamation of the governor. These specimens from the 
laws and governmental usages of California are sufficient 
basis for appeal in the schools of that State to the highest 
motives of conduct. The basis will be found to be still 
broader in most of the other States. 

1 United states Reports, CXLIII, 457-471. 
83 



MORAL TRAINING 

There is not in all the world to-day a single government 
which denies or repudiates the authority of a Supreme 
Being or the obligation of his moral laws. Cicero, the 
heathen philosopher, maintained that the state is inherently 
religious, — religio haeret in republica. The universal char- 
acter which the nations have impressed upon their govern- 
ments justifies the claim. All that we ask is that the state 
teach her own laws to her own citizens, together with 
those moral and religious convictions which have wrought 
in her own life and have made her laws what they are. 

And since these moral laws on our statute books have 
been derived, actually and historically, from the moral laws 
of the Holy Scriptures, the Ten Commandments ought to 
be taught in the schools as the best and most authoritative 
summary of moral duties known to men or nations. This 
moral code is accepted by Jews and Christians, Protestants 
and Catholics ahke. There is no moral excellence which is 
not required, and no moral evil which is not forbidden, 
in these ten comprehensive precepts. To the vast major- 
ity of our people these commandments come as the voice 
of a personal God, and supply, therefore, the highest 
conceivable motive for obedience. If there are any who 
do not so regard them, they will still agree with their 
fellow-citizens as to the intrinsic excellence and practical 
value of these great rules of right living which for thou- 
sands of years have been regarded as incomparable by the 
greatest moral teachers of the world. In the deadly conflict 
with vice and crime which ravage the land like a pestilence, 
how can we combat these evils in any way so effectually as 
by carefully and patiently teaching to the young citizens 
of the whole nation the law which forbids all evil, inculcates 

84 



IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS 

all virtue, and suggests the highest conceivable motives for 
avoiding the one and practicing the other ? As we have 
generally, and rightly, placed the flag of the country over 
the schoolhouses of the country as the symbol of the na- 
tion's authority and a mute yet eloquent lesson in patriot- 
ism, ought we not to place the moral law of God before 
the eyes of the children as the foundation of law and the 
true basis of authority ? 

5. This would not infringe on the conscientious rights of 
any citizen^ or of any body of citizens. This proposal, if 
adopted, would not concede any preference to one church 
above another, nor give to any church an advantage over 
others. It would simply be the nation afifirming her own 
character and transmitting that character to coming genera- 
tions. In doing this the nation exercises her own rights and 
liberty, while it accords the same rights and Uberty to every 
citizen. No objection can be urged against this course of 
action which might not, on the same grounds, be urged 
against the character of the nation and against her laws. 

No parent, therefore, could come to the school authori- 
ties and say, " I do not believe in what you are teaching to 
my children and I object to your continuing it." The parent 
may believe that the- earth is flat, not round, or that mon- 
archy is a better form of government than repubhcanism, 
or that gambling is an innocent diversion, but he has no 
right to veto the laws which prohibit gambling or which 
estabhsh our repubhcan institutions, or the education 
which the state, in accordance with these laws, may give 
in the pubhc schools. To any parent so objecting the state 
can reply : " We recognize your rights as the parent of 
this child, and we will not interfere with your liberty to 

85 



MORAL TRAINING 

teach him what you beUeve ; but he is also the child of the 
nation, and the nation has the same rights and the same 
liberty. If we recognize and protect your rights in your 
sphere as his parent, you must not seek to abridge or 
interfere with the equal rights and liberty of the nation 
acting in her sphere." The same answer, obviously, should 
be given to any church or churches who would assume to 
demand that any particular instruction be given in the 
public schools, or who would object to any teaching which 
the nation deems it of vital importance that her citizens 
shall receive. 

Moreover, this would only be doing, more formally and 
explicitly, what the state does in many other ways. In the 
rotunda of the Capitol at Washington there is a painting 
of the Embarkation of the Pilgrims, and of John Robinson, 
their pastor, discoursing to them out of an open Bible. In 
the capitol of Massachusetts is a painting of John EUot 
preaching to the Indians. On the plaza of the city hall in 
Philadelphia a bronze monument has been placed recently 
in honor of the Pilgrims, and the statue, of heroic size, 
holds a volume with the title, " Holy Bible," inscribed upon 
it. These are historical memorials of the part which reli- 
gious convictions have played in our national history, and 
they are also lessons to the whole people, saying, "Be ye 
what these men were, that ye may serve the nation as 
these men did." The spirit which would object to similar 
lessons in our public schools would overthrow every such 
monument and obliterate every such inscription ; would 
silence prayer in our legislative halls and forbid our judges 
to invoke God's mercy on the souls of the criminals whom 
they condemn to death. 

86 



IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS 

6. Under this plmi the schools would keep pace with every 
step of moral progress made by the nation, and would assist 
that progress. As soon as any moral victory was gained in 
the field of legislation, the new law and the reasons for 
it would be taught in the schoolroom, securing general 
obedience to it and providing against its reversal. On the 
other hand, the schools would be constantly training a 
body of citizens not only loyally disposed toward all law 
but capable of and inclined to progress in moral legis- 
lation. It would be difficult to see how the conditions of 
moral improvement through the successive generations of a 
nation's life could be, by the nation herself, more happily 
fulfilled. A vision of such a social state must have been 
before the eye of Abraham Lincoln when he wrote : 

Let reverence for law be taught in schools and colleges, be written 
in spelHng books and primers, be published from pulpits, and pro- 
claimed in legislative houses, and enforced in the courts of justice ; 
in short, let it become the political religion of the nation. 

A happy future awaits this nation, and any nation, which 
shall consecrate her school system mainly to the develop- 
ment and training of the moral character of her citizens. 
When the nation shall do this we may be sure that other 
social institutions will not fail to do their share of the 
common task. The church and the family, each in its own 
sphere, will teach the truth as God gives it to see the truth, 
and will wield the authority with which God has clothed it 
for the promotion of righteousness. And this work will be 
maintained through successive generations, the nation ever 
aspiring and striving toward better things, ever seeking to 
perfect her laws as an instrument for the moral elevation 
of her people, and ever teaching those laws, and the higher 

87 



MORAL TRAINING 

law from which they are derived, in the schools where she 
prepares her citizens for the responsibilities of citizenship. 
But the nation must strive toward this end consciously and 
of set purpose, not afraid to avow her concern for the 
moral improvement of her people, and not hesitating to 
use the religious faith and conviction which have wrought 
in her own history for the guidance and uplifting of the 
generations which are coming after. 

T. P. Stevenson, D.D. 
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 



Ill 

WE are just now in the midst of an apparent deluge of 
corruption in public affairs. I am inclined to believe 
that the American people have not become morally degener- 
ate suddenly. It is one of the chief tasks of each generation 
to withstand the evil it finds in civic, social, and private 
life. During the Revolutionary period, and again during 
the Civil War, it was the custom to decry the evil days 
upon which the nation had come, when greed and selfish- 
ness were as pronounced as loyalty and heroism. There is 
a remarkable constancy and continuity in the quality of 
the moral life of peoples. The succeeding generations are 
bound together through imitation, custom, and tradition, 
just as in physical form and feature they are held by blood 
heredity. This relative fixedness is a fortunate thing. It 
means that whatever reform is undertaken, to be worth 
while it must not be a superficial affair, else it will be 
simply like a ripple on the surface of a great stream : it 
must be such a reform as will influence the springs of 
human conduct. It means, too, that whatever is done that 
influences in a profound way the hearts and actions of men 
will be conserved in the lives of coming generations. Our 
problem is deep as life itself, and must reach out into the 
ages. 

I do not mean to deny that the amount of civic wicked- 
ness at present is especially great. It may be due to a 
fresh infection, like the spread of a contagion. Besides, 



MORAL TRAINING 

the chances for graft and self-seeking in this, as in every 
transition time, may be unusually numerous. If opportu- 
nities help produce a genius, they will also make a villain. 
But is not the apparently aggravated corruption due largely 
to the fact that a few strenuous souls have forcefully laid 
bare the conditions existing below the ''surface stream, 
shallow and Ught," of our public life ? I have noted that 
if, four miles below a certain city that pours its sewage 
into a creek, one stirs up the sands in the bottom of the 
seemingly sparkling water, it is suddenly filled with filth, 
and the stench is offensive to the nostrils. I suspect that 
at this time the muck rakers have simply roiled the stream 
of public life and shown us the threatening facts in human 
nature that must be the object of our effort. 

What shall be done ? The muck rakers cannot cure the 
evil. Numbers of them may rake across the stream until 
they are old and gray, but if it receives impurities from 
above, their work is relatively useless. We must control 
the sources, just as cities are learning to control the springs 
and streamlets above their water supply, rather than labor 
so assiduously to purify polluted rivers. We must spend 
not less effort in the reformation of present wickedness, 
but far greater effort in perfecting human lives. 

Moral training must begin with the childre7t. Hence it 
is that the question is one of supreme importance to the 
school. Hence, too, the importance of the state assuming 
control of the education of the children as early in their 
lives as practicable. The home and the state must remain 
correlative institutions, but it is the function of the state 
to bring the school under its jurisdiction. The justification 
of the kindergarten, I take it, is not so much that the 

90 



IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS 

children are taught specific facts and occupations during 
the early years, as that the schools may exert a wholesome 
influence over the lives of the children as early as the third 
or fourth year. One of the pioneer kindergartners of San 
Francisco undertook an investigation in v^hich she showed 
that only an inappreciable per cent of the young men of 
the city who had attended kindergarten had been subject 
to arrest for misdemeanors, although the kindergartens had 
been established in the slum districts as missionary enter- 
prises, and in communities in which the per cent of arrests 
in the total population was considerable. It is fair to 
assume that the difference was due to a taste of a higher 
type of life and a sense of social responsibility that were 
made possible from contact with refined teachers and in 
the community life of the school. Such enterprises have a 
leverage upon society that is entirely incommensurate with 
any effort that might be exerted during later years. 

It is next to impossible to reform an old experienced 
sinner, a political traitor, or a social grafter of three-score 
years. His spinal cord is thoroughly organized around evil, 
and all the atoms of his being play in tune to unworthy 
impulses. To make him over into a righteous citizen is 
about as impossible as to hope to harvest luscious fruit from 
a gnarled and blasted tree. Nothing short of fire, in this 
world or the next, will purge him ; and when the purging 
is done, there is left no more of good than is to be found 
in a little child, and that without promise of a rich and 
beautiful future. The one great hope of social evolution is 
in beginning afresh with each new generation of children. 

In still another way we must purify the sources of the 
moral life. Moral training will be efficient in so far as it 

91 



MORAL TRAINING 

influences the instincts, motives, tastes, and aspirations of 
children, and not in so far as it tries to inculcate in their 
minds ideas of right and wrong. Our schools should have 
not less ethical instruction, but higher moral impulsions. 
These are the deeper sources of conduct. There has been 
no little anxiety of late lest, in the absence of a definite 
attempt to instill ethical ideas, the school should cease to 
be a character-building institution. I do not beheve the 
anxiety is well founded. On the contrary, it seems to me 
that the neglect of so-called ethical instruction is a fortu- 
nate thing, if only it disturbs us into an appreciation of the 
more fundamental considerations involved in the situation. 
I have observed " morals " being taught in different 
parts of our own country, and have seen, to some extent, 
the process going on in two or three other countries, and I 
confess the cases are few, and stand out chiefly by way of 
exception, in which there is any perceptible spiritual carry- 
ing power in the attempts. They usually degenerate into 
the teaching of facts about conduct, — an almost purely 
intellectualizing process. It is more common to find the 
sort of genuine appreciation, of heart response, that has 
value for moraUty, in some of the ordinary subjects, such 
as history, literature, nature study, and art, than in the 
study of morals itself. The instruction is too formal. 
There is no particular difference in value to the spiritual 
development of children between purely factual instruc- 
tion in arithmetic or in secular history and that in morals. 
Sometimes the instruction is vapid and lacking in the 
quality of genuineness. A living response to good and 
beautiful things does not come on demand, but more fre- 
quently at the point where it is least expected. With the 

92 



IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS 

prevailing rule -of -thumb methods, perfunctoriness, heart- 
lessness, and externality in the matter of moral instruction, 
I do not believe that it would be any great calamity if we 
had none of it. 

Whether the statement be true or false, I am going to 
assume — for the sake of having the point at issue clearly 
before our minds — that all teaching of morals be excluded 
from the schools, and then ask to what extent the power 
of an earnest teacher need be hampered in promoting the 
moral development of her pupils ? My own conviction is 
that her efficiency in this direction need not be lessened 
materially, and that the result would be a gain, provided 
that she had been supposing that character formation 
depends largely upon the brief period given to moral 
instruction. 

Ethical teaching should form no insignificant part of the 
course of study, especially during the later years of the 
common school, and I shall revert in the sequel to a few 
suggestions in regard to the kind and amount of such 
teaching in the curriculum; but I wish chiefly to raise the 
question in regard to what can be done in the schools, 
without formal ethical instruction, to arouse the moral 
impulses that predetermine character. 

I would suggest a revision along at least five lines, one 
of which has reference to the teacher, the second to the 
pupils' surroundings, the third to the teacher's methods 
and to the curriculum, the fourth to our conceptions about 
morality, and the fifth to the nature of children. The end 
in view is to portray, however imperfectly, the possibility 
of a school the whole of which shall, in detail and in its 
entirety, contribute, either directly or indirectly, to the 

93 



MORAL TRAINING 

formation of character. In these suggestions there is 
nothing visionary ; for they are only the simple statement 
of what I have found suggested in the actual experience 
of good teachers. 

I. The ordinary secular school will be primarily a 
character-building institution if the teacher is profoundly 
moral, — cheerful, natural, livable and busy, to be sure, but 
having in the midst of it all an emancipated spirit that 
lives behind the words, speaks through the actions, lends 
color and quality to the thoughts, and breathes life and 
health into the atmosphere of the entire school. 

We are coming to know as never before that there is 
nothing — motive, impulse, thought, aspiration — that is 
not finding expression in the tone and quality of the whole 
personality. Physiologists and psychologists are showing 
constantly that every idea or state of feeling registers itself 
definitely and in an all-pervasive way, though very minutely, 
in pulse beat, nerve tension, and muscular reaction. This 
kind of fact is becoming so simple and so demonstrably 
true that every one can understand it and no one can 
doubt it. It is a fact so important in understanding how 
the mental life behaves that all persons should take account 
of it. 

It was shown a few years ago by an Italian physiologist 
(Mosso) that one can think no thought, entertain no feel- 
ing or motive however slight, without the circulatory sys- 
tem being influenced in at least four ways ; namely, in 
pulse rate, quality of heart beat, blood pressure, and distri- 
bution of the blood over the body. Corresponding changes 
occur in the respiration, glandular condition, and in muscu- 
lar tension. His experiment, which is now performed in all 

94 



IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS 

the laboratories, requires a delicate apparatus for magni- 
fying the kinds of bodily expressions that are taking place, 
most of which are of such a minute kind that no one could 
be conscious of their presence except as shown in the 
registration of the apparatus. Another student, Professor 
Sanford, has demonstrated, with delicate instruments for 
magnifying the movements of the larynx, that that organ 
moves almost as perceptibly during silent reading as 
during whispering. The presence of these delicate modes 
of expression has been shown in the laboratories in very 
many ways. 

The experimentation but proves what we tacitly admit 
when we accept the evidence of the handwriting expert, 
or claim that the inner life of a friend is betrayed some- 
how in such features and modes of expression as we 
cannot at all describe if we are asked to do so. There 
is nothing going on in the life of a teacher that does not 
find its fitting modes of expression, most of which are 
of such a subtle character that we are apt to describe 
them by some indefinable term such as ''personality" or 
" individuality." 

The further question arises, "Do these subtle manifesta- 
tions of the deeper life of the teacher pass over into the 
minds and hearts of her pupils.?" As to a positive answer 
to this question we can no longer remain in doubt. It is 
amply proved in our laboratories that our minds are influ- 
enced by little elements in our experience so minute that 
we cannot perceive them, no matter how much we try. 

For instance, Mr. Bruckner, in experimenting upon touch, 
has found that if two imperceptible weights — each, say, 
eleven grains — are applied to some distant points on the 

95 



MORAL TRAINING 

skin, they together can be perceived. Zero added to zero 
should give zero, but as a matter of fact it gives to the 
mental Hfe a definite impression. Professor Jastrow and 
Professor Pierce performed an experiment like this : Two 
bright plates of small difference of degree of illumination 
were shown for an instantaneous time from behind a screen. 
To a person sitting in front the difference in the degree of 
illumination was so slight, and the time of exposure so 
short, that it was impossible to tell which was the brighter 
plate ; but each time he must guess which was the brighter. 
Had the imperceptible difference had no value to the mind, 
the guesses in the long run, just like heads and tails of a 
penny, should have been approximately fifty per cent right 
and fifty per cent wrong. But the guesses piled up on the 
side of the right judgment, — that is, the mind can be 
influenced by imperceptible impressions. 

The fact that we are getting definite results for our 
mental lives out of infinitesimal impressions is demon- 
strated by experiments on almost all of the senses. Even 
more convincing in showing the extreme sensitivity of the 
mind is the work of Mosso ^ and many other persons upon 
the quality of the responses that occur during sleep. If 
the person is sleeping upon a finely balanced platform and 
a slight sound strikes the ear or a most delicate touch is 
applied to the skin, the head end of the platform swings 
downward, showing an increase of blood to the head, which 
is one of the conditions of increased mental activity. The 
person sleeps on, but still his organism has responded to 
the stimulus ; and we know that every such response of 
the body tends to influence our mental states and processes. 

1 Fear, pp. 97 ff. 

96 



IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS 

Such results as these have led one of our physiologists 
to say that the mind is like a wind-swept lake, which is 
eternally being influenced by the winds of experience.^ 

Thus it is that everything that is going on in the life of 
a teacher, which finds its expression in the quality of her 
personahty, is filtering and seeping into the lives of her 
pupils. She can in reality hide nothing. Whatever she is 
in the depth of her life is forming a part of the atmosphere 
of the school, and this atmosphere is in turn forming uncon- 
sciously the lives of her pupils, in the same way that the 
air, sunshine, moisture, and elements of the soil are feed- 
ing the life of the plant. 

Thus it is coming to be demonstrably true that out of 
the heart are the issues of life. There is nothing more 
pervasive than character. Morality is as catching as 
wildfire ; it is as contagious as disease, or as sin. We 
know all this, after a fashion, but shall not have appreciated 
it at its full worth until the best, maturest, and largest- 
spirited men and women are secured and retained in the 
teaching profession. 

There was a time in a far-away country, long ago, when 
only the sages were teachers, — men who, after their period 
of activity in social and political matters, had gone apart 
to ^' solve the divine mystery," and who then came back to 
their own as wise men and prophets, and taught the children 
in twos and threes. We stand now at the opposite extreme, 
when our teachers of children range in age from sixteen to 
the unspeakable age of thirty or thirty-five. There is a 

1 A grouping of many facts of this kind is to be found in Stratton, 
Experimental Psychology and Ctdtnre, Cliaps. IV and V, and in Jastrow, 
The Snb-Conscious. 

97 



MORAL TRAINING 

little something in the old Hindoo custom that we may 
take rather seriously. It is impossible for a teacher to 
teach what she has n't got down deep within her heart. It 
is as impossible for her to have a devout nature and keep 
it hidden beneath the routine of the school day as it is to 
pollute a spring of pure water, or quench a fire by throw- 
ing fagots upon it. 

This is the consideration of first importance. With the 
right teacher, alive in mind and pure in heart, the question 
of keeping the flame of morality burning while the necessary 
tasks of the school day are performed will solve itself. To 
secure the proper teachers is in part a matter of selection, 
and in part a problem to be solved along the line suggested 
above : aspiration toward the higher life is a step in its 
own realization. If teachers felt their responsibility and 
their need, and would pray often and earnestly the prayer 
of Socrates, ''Ye gods, make me beautiful within," the 
prayer would be answered by the very act of uttering it. 
The beauty of the life within would find its way into the 
hearts of their pupils and become a part of the glory 
of humanity. 

II. The second line along which we may expect improve- 
ment in making the whole school life contribute to char- 
acter is in a measure the counterpart of the last. The 
surroundings of the child must be made as perfect as pos- 
sible. -Everything about him is food by which he grows. 
His mental life is hungry for impressions. His passion for 
play, his curiosity, his inquisitiveness, his courting of dan- 
ger, show his instinctive need of experiences. What use 
he makes of the things about him is determined some- 
what by the hereditary characteristics which condition his 

98 



IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS 

mental activity. It is determined also, in part, by what is 
present in his environment. 

We know that the things about him are influencing him 
when his attention is not fixed upon them, and even when 
they would escape his attention entirely if he should try to 
perceive them. This was shown under the last topic. 
Enough facts to demonstrate its truth could be enumerated 
to use our entire space. It is so important a consideration 
that I shall emphasize it by one other illustration. Hansen 
and Lehmann have shown that if two persons are sitting 
at the two foci of large concave reflectors placed opposite 
each other so that any sound made at one focus will have 
its vibrations collected at the other focus, the involuntary 
movements of speech when one is thinking intently of an 
idea will be sufficient to transmit to the other person's ear 
and mind the corresponding idea.^ But the one person 
cannot perceive the presence of the laryngeal movements, 
nor the other the distinct auditory impressions by which 
he gets the idea. 

The fact cannot longer be taken with indifference that 
the mental fife is marvelously sensitive, and that it drinks 
in continually, and reacts upon, and grows by, the impres- 
sions it receives from without. This is the condition back 
of imitation and custom, and makes clear why they are 
such powerful factors in society. It is the condition also 
back of " social heredity," which is no less important than 
blood heredity in making the race like a long-lived individ- 
ual. From earhest babyhood the child's mental life is 
assimilating, polyp-like, the mental stuff about it. It is 
not to be wondered at that Jukes babies grow up to be 

1 See Scripture, New Psychology, pp. 63 ff., 239. 

99 
LOFC. 



MORAL TRAINING 

slovenly and immoral like their parents, nor that the off- 
spring of the Jonathan Edwards family should lead lives of 
high respectability. 

The matter of environment may well be taken more 
seriously than it is at present. The school grounds must 
be made right. Outbuildings carelessly constructed or in 
too close proximity and left without supervision may ten 
times outweigh the lessons in decency that the teacher is 
able to give during school hours. In one at least of our 
cities the school authorities are working toward having two 
closets at opposite ends of each floor, to which the pupils 
may revert briefly and singly. The playgrounds should 
have sufficient oversight so that obscenity and vulgarity, 
to which children in groups turn instinctively, and which 
are rampant especially in city and village schools, may 
be minimized until more refining influences can get in 
their work of preformation. The physical appointments 
of the school should be pleasing and uplifting. Flower 
beds, grass plots, scrupulous cleanliness in doors and out, 
pleasing tints and harmonies of color, artistic furnishing, 
graceful architecture, well-selected pictures, refinements 
of speech and dress and movements, — these are the silent 
but all-powerful harbingers of the higher life, and get in 
their work during every hour of the day. 

We have a doctrine that the child must meet the world 
as it is and grow strong by resisting its evil. Like every 
other doctrine it is true up to a certain point, but taken 
singly is mischievous. A tree grows strong by resisting the 
winds, and strikes its roots deep during a drought ; but a 
gardener knows enough to protect for a while the tender 
sproutlet of a tree against drought and accident. If it is 

I GO 



IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS 

exposed too soon to the ravages of insects and the scurry- 
ing feet of children and pets, its experience may work its 
ruin and not its profit. It is a complex and delicate process 
for a human being to thread the normal course from baby- 
hood to maturity. Clouston, who spent his life studying 
physical and mental abnormality, remarks that it is almost 
a miracle if, in so few brief years, the individual can pass 
safely along the path over which the race has come through 
so many ages of failure and success. 

III. The third point of revision has reference to the 
things to be taught and the method of teaching them. 
How can a teacher do it all and keep from getting lost 
in the thousand petty details of school life and the count- 
less things she is expected to teach ? She can't ; nor 
should she try. Part of the routine of the school, or her 
own life, will have to be sacrificed, and in the dilemma 
she had better save her own soul and the souls of her 
pupils. 

It is a long and a sad story how we have mistaken 
means for ends in education, and are making a great point 
of mastering the tools of knowledge, instead of concerning 
ourselves about wisdom. We teach how to read, instead 
of reading ; how to draw, instead of drawing ; how to 
cipher, instead of doing the actual thing that ciphering 
will help us to accomplish ; and so on. It is as great folly 
as if a carpenter should busy himself all his life making 
tools, and then get an inkhng at the end that he might 
have made something worth while with them. A safe rule 
might be, teach only that which has some real life signifi- 
cance, both at the time it is being learned and for later life. 
Learning merely for the sake of learning is rarely, if ever, 

lOI 



MORAL TRAINING 

excusable ; but of learning for the sake of appreciating and 
enjoying and growing, we can never get too much. 

Here, I am inclined to believe, the fault is as much with 
the teacher as with the curriculum. In following the rule 
suggested above there is not so much in the school that 
must of necessity be excluded. The most formal, mean- 
ingless subject, under one teacher's presentation, will, in 
the hands of a real teacher, be suffused with life significance. 

I have seen a class in geometry — after some weeks of 
interpretation of what proofs in general, and geometric 
proofs in particular, are, of what relation the subject has to 
the rest of our thought life, and what its meaning is to the 
actual interests of men — become so enthused with the sub- 
ject that occasionally, after some especially neat, clean-cut 
demonstration of a difficult problem, it would break out in 
applause as spontaneously as if the demonstration had been 
the rendering of some work of art, — which it really was. 
I have seen reading lessons which were purely formal exer- 
cises in enunciation, inflection, and pronunciation, serve, 
even with tiny pupils, as a means of entering into some- 
thing true or beautiful, and therefore enjoyable. 

We should think twice before tearing out any of the 
pieces from our educational structure. They have served 
or are serving some purpose. Everybody is wiser than 
anybody, and our customs are the best wisdom of a large 
number of people put into practice. But we cannot doubt 
that formalism has become a dead weight that the schools 
cannot afford to carry, that the formal and disciplinary 
subjects have usurped an inexcusably large share of the 
place which should be occupied by the cultural, and that 
the school has become a sort of monastic institution, rather 

102 



IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS 

far removed from the real occupations of common life. 
Schools should deal more with real life situations. 

What is the connection between a live school and moral- 
ity } Their union is in the person whose heart and mind 
are the theater for both. There is no kinship between the 
livest of live things, which is a genuine moral impulse, and 
the deadest of dead things, which much of the round of 
school occupations sometimes is, — except by way of 
opposition. The real relation will be apparent later as we 
discuss morality as a heartful response to ends and ideals 
that seem worth while. 

IV. The next consideration has to do with our interpre- 
tation of this thing we speak of so loosely as morality. It 
means a variety of things, all the way from the most intel- 
lectualized notions about duty to the deepest springs of 
feeling and conduct. My appeal would be that we read it 
out more than we do in terms of life — life at its growing 
points, the life of each in relation to all and in relation to 
his highest sense of reality — and in terms of the spirit one 
carries into these relations. It is this for which every 
great educational reformer has stood. I have been pro- 
foundly impressed, during recent months, in trying to 
figure out, as dispassionately as I could, from the Sermon 
on the Mount and the parables and sayings of Christ, what 
his " doctrines " of ethics were. He Uves and speaks with 
a higher authority than reason. Instead of a system of 
ethics, one finds the cup of cold water, a warm, loving 
heart, and a clear vision that could see the great truths of 
life reflected in growing seeds and plants and in work- 
ing men and innocent children. If the teachers of children 
could only catch the spirit of morality, above its facts and 

103 



MORAL TRAINING 

principles, the school might easily become, as it deserves 
to be, the greatest agency for the moral regeneration of 
society. 

The question arises how, without continually having the 
mind of the child alert about the whys and wherefores of 
conduct, is he to be able to judge his actions ? How is he 
to learn to guide his course without a reasoned system of 
ethics ? He should, in later years, acquire such a system ; 
but I must insist that even then his ethical judgments must 
remain undefined, though not indefinite. It is the ever- 
recurring temptation, bred of inertia, to split up and dissect 
and define and classify the things that belong primarily 
to our appreciation or spiritual apprehension, that gets us 
into trouble. We know some things with our hearts better 
than we can ever know them with our minds, and the 
values we place upon conduct belong among them. I do 
not know why I love my friend, nor exactly what I get out 
of the Fifth Symphony or the Sistine Madonna, but I go 
on drawing life from them in spite of the failure of my 
intellect to analyze them. 

There are, however, a few specific characteristics of mor- 
ality upon which we can agree, and which the schools may 
well cultivate by way of preparing the soil and sowing the 
seeds of the higher life. Without trying to be exhaustive, 
let us note a few of these, which seem to be at the same time 
basal elements in morality and good points in pedagogy. 

I. In the first place, there is tho. power to enter feelingly 
into so77ie tJionght interest or into some occupation. The non- 
moral and the immoral person alike are creatures who do 
what they are made to do. They are compelled instead of 
impelled. When the restraint is off they fall. Arnold's 

104 



IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS 

definition, " Religion is morality touched with emotion," is 
doubtless very faulty, but it is among the best of the angu- 
lar snap shots of the actual religious life of those who stand 
historically as the great spiritual leaders ; and a paraphrase 
of it, by slipping into it the word "education" instead of 
'* religion," would be a good characterization of the ideals 
of the great educational reformers. In all the list of studies 
and occupations in the school there are only two — writing 
and spelling — in which I cannot recall some teacher or 
teachers who arouse such a happy, heartful response as to 
give them ethical and even spiritual significance. 

2. It is important, too, to morality to do the deed and 
live the life whole-heartedly . It takes in the entire person- 
ality. In this respect morality is akin to religion. It is the 
response of the whole life to its fullest sense of worthwhile- 
ness. This attitude can be cultivated in the schools. In so 
far as there is good teaching, it will be. I saw a teacher 
recently teaching reading (she called it reading, but it was 
also expression, dramatization, and a deal more) with a les- 
son on the classic, " The Three Bears." The children were 
entirely lost in the story and the situation, and did the act- 
ing of the play in that masterful way that is given only to 
little children and great artists to do. Sometime these 
little ones might become good, noble lives in society. I saw 
last summer another teacher, excellently trained, who went 
into a school which had been priding itself on its thorough- 
ness in discipline. It was days and even weeks before she 
could get from those fourth-grade pupils anything but a 
mechanical Yes and No. These pupils had acquired habits 
of life that were tending to make morality impossible. 
Our schools, with their choppiness and mechanization are 

105 



MORAL TRAINING 

instilling spot knowledge. They are fixing the habit of 
responding to little things in little ways, instead of respond- 
ing to little things (if there are any) in a great way, or to 
great things with a whole Hfe. In so far as this goes on 
and becomes an habitual reaction of the pupils, it is mak- 
ing useful and beautiful citizenship an improbability, and 
even an impossibility unless it be developed by outside 
influences and agencies in spite of the common school. 

3. A third element of morality and of good training is 
the habit of responsiveness. To be alive to the tasks that 
are set, to the teacher's wish, and to the facts that lie 
about, is the condition of a good student ; to respond to 
persons and institutions and social forces is a primary 
requisite of morality, just as social and civic callousness is 
the primary root of evil and vice. Responsiveness to the 
thoughts and sentiments of persons and books, to personal 
ideals and to instinctive promptings, is one of the primary 
conditions of morality. And responsiveness is a habit that 
can be cultivated. Through variety in its exercise the habit 
may pass over into a mood. I do not know much about the 
doctrine of "formal discipline," — how the training of one 
habit or power will cultivate another ; whether there is a 
close connection, for example, between making a square 
box and doing the square deed. I have experimented not 
a little upon it, and am led in the direction of doubt of it. 
But of this one can be certain : the teacher herself may 
widen the spirit involved in any habit or idea until it passes 
over into related habits and ideas, and becomes finally a 
persistent attitude. Here we have the responsibility falling 
back upon the teacher again as to whether the manifold 
habits of responsiveness, for the varied exercise of which 

106 



IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS 

the school is so full, shall break over into the highest 
reaches of morality. 

4. The most central fact in morality is the adjustment of 
the individual to the other person and to the social group. It 
is no accident of language that ethical terms, like " duty," 
*' ethics," and '' morality," have this idea bound up in them. 
Just as adjustment to man's physical environment is the 
source of business enterprise, and adjustment to his sense 
of a higher reality is the central fact in rehgion, so his 
adjustment to persons is the heart of morality. There is 
no institution — not even the home — that is better adapted 
than the school to cultivate so-called responsiveness. If 
this were its sole purpose, the school would be justified. 
With its larger number of individuals than the home, 
but still few enough so that the child can feel himself a 
part of it, the school life is a natural transition stage from 
the family to the greater life of society. 

It is by minghng with others, by actually facing for him- 
self the difficult situations which arise, that the child's char- 
acter is formed. Some sort of a social sense may arise as 
the outcome of heredity and instinct ; without the interplay 
of social forces his moral life is sure to be poorly organized 
and inefficient. It is in the intense heat of this interplay 
that character is forged. What he can do, the results that 
he can achieve among his fellows, is the measure of his 
own will, and the tension and quality of his will are the 
measure to himself of his own personahty. His sense of 
himself and of his moral responsibility is a reflection of 
his recognition of other persons and of a higher law behind 
them which controls their actions. It is idle to suppose, as 
James Mark Baldwin has so well shown in his Social and 

107 



MORAL TRAINING 

Ethical Interpretations} that either a forceful personal will 
or the recognition of a social order can develop independ- 
ently of each other. It is in the normal interplay of the 
two that there arises the sense of duty, obligation, justice, 
honor, sympathy, respect for authority, and all the rest. 
The school, bringing as it does each child into intimate 
relations with many others, is a garden in which these 
virtues can flourish. 

I would make an appeal, however, for a reform in school 
life in the direction of the naturabiess of the social relations 
that obtain in it. They are too artificial. Such conditions 
as the children are to meet in mature life do not obtain in 
the school. The most conservative are free to admit that 
we should advance many strides in the direction advocated 
by John Dewey in his School and Society. There must be 
normal interaction of the life of each and all, including 
that of the teacher. The introduction of manual training, 
object teaching, and physical culture are not enough to save 
the day. The children should enter, in childlike ways to be 
sure, into all the occupations they will observe and engage 
in as adults. There should be not less authority of the 
teacher, but more, — more, because, being less mechanical, 
it has the power of nature and society within it. In like 
manner the school is in need of more order ; but it should 
be order of a kind that springs up in the natural give and 
take among the pupils, and in the inhibitions that the wishes 
and conduct of each place upon the others. Something 
approaching the quality of the life that is found in the 
family should obtain, at the sacrifice of the military ideals 
which now pervade the school. 

1 Mental Developjuent : Social and Ethical Interpretations. 
io8 



IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS 

There is scarcely a latent power in the child's nature 
that is not daily stimulated with a teacher that is authori- 
tative and companionable, and with the group of other 
children, — children differing in age, taste, and temper- 
ament. With the common life expressed in the games and 
occupations, he is getting exactly the lessons he needs to 
learn for citizenship : when passionate, he learns self-con- 
trol ; when selfish, he is given a sure harvest of unhappi- 
ness ; when obstinate, he feels himself growing aloof from 
his fellows ; and when disrespectful of authority, he feels 
the sting of social disapproval. And best of all, with the 
knocks he receives, and also with the pleasures from 
intermingling with others, society is becoming to him a 
reality and not a fine fancy. Its absolute demands on him 
and his responsibility to it become real facts that he can no 
more ignore or slight than he can deny the fact of his own 
being. And this is what society needs, — men and women 
who cannot talk glibly on solidarity, and then ignore the 
duties nearest: at hand ; who cannot build Utopias and spin 
theories of social equality, and then be arbitrary and incon- 
siderate to the maid in the kitchen, the servant in the 
garden, and the poor in the streets. 

The socially unfit are those who have met the difficult 
situations of life and failed in adjustment, just as the 
socially and politically successful are those who can respond 
in a large way to a large number of persons. Real training 
for life consists in acquiring the power of tactful adjustment 
almost momentarily to that indefinable something called 
public sentiment, — a fact so conflicting and intricate that 
its elements cannot be determined intellectually, but must 
be felt by a sort of refined sensitivity. Every hour of the 

109 



MORAL TRAINING 

school life should be rich in its training in this power of 
refined adjustment. 

A word should be said in passing about the matter of 
discipline. We as Americans are proverbially lax in our 
rigidness in discipline in the home and in the school. This 
distinction we have won is our clear gain if it means that 
a higher kind of authority is prevailing in our homes than 
that of the imperiousness of our Anglo-Saxon forefathers. 
Our professors are not so august, our preachers not so 
terrible, our teachers not so awe-inspiring nor our obedience 
so groveling as in older times and countries. Still our 
authority and obedience, if we are to flourish, must be no 
less real. The one indispensable thing in our relation of 
teacher and child is companionship. The natural fruits of 
autocracy, whether in Russia or in the American school, 
are unhappiness, friction, waste, disobedience, and under- 
handedness. If the teacher has not authority which springs 
from greater knowledge, superior advantages, and spiritual 
worth, she cannot gain it by any arbitrary method. And 
if she possesses the authority of a higher kind, its presence 
is sure to be felt. 

I do not believe the time should come when the pupil 
will not feel the danger of punishment of the severest sort 
being administered, nor do I believe that it is either possi- 
ble or expedient that authority that seems arbitrary to the 
pupil himself should not be occasionally visited upon him. 
It is true to life, and a part of good training, that pupils 
should often feel, to use the words of Felix Adler, the full 
majesty of the moral law. This authority, which seems 
arbitrary to the pupil but really is not, should be a lessen- 
ing quantity with the advancing years of his life. There is 

no 



IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS 

certain to come a time in his development when external 
authority must break down and give place to an inner 
authority, if the boy is to become a strong man. The 
occasion for the break should never arise. The youth's 
independence is not something given him out of hand when 
he reaches the age of twenty-one, but a natural right, in 
the exercise of which he should be schooled from earliest 
boyhood. 

5 . The pupil should come to feel his ozun life mid truth 
as part of a larger life and truth. Almost every normal 
human being must sooner or later undergo a sort of 
Copernican revolution in his life, by which the center of 
gravity is transferred from himself to ''society" or to the 
'' universe." Otherwise his stupendous stock of self-regard, 
which at one time in the course of evolution was normal, 
is dragged up into the present and renders healthy social 
relations difficult or impossible. 

One of the ways of approach to this transference of the 
center of interest is in the cultivation and right use of the 
imagination^ by which the person can transcend his own 
narrow limitations and make real in thought and feeling 
the world of people and things outside. It has often been 
observed, and truly, that the primary sin of selfishness is 
due to an inabihty to Hve in imagination the lives of others. 
Slavery to a finished and finite truth and to a narrowly cir- 
cumscribed world, true only as external thing, or as sub- 
jective sensation, is the result of a blunted imagination. 
Fairy story, fable and novel, history, civil government, 
biology, and sociology, the community life of the school, 
can open up to each child a real world of people and a 
universe of which he is a part. The inevitable outcome of 

III 



MORAL TRAINING 

a right use of nature study, geography, science, history, 
and astronomy, is to picture progressively a world infinitely 
extended in time and space, changeless in its basal quali- 
ties, and on which the person is entirely dependent. The 
natural fruit of such studies is a spirit of humility and 
reverence. A whole-hearted responsiveness to persons and 
to the highest object of reverence is that in which both 
morality and religion consist. 

Another approach to this important result is through 
cultivating a longing for and a delight in the thing that 
lies just next. In its higher aspects it is the truth-seeking 
and truth-loving spirit. With little children the thing that 
lies just beyond will be a little thing. Even then, under 
the guidance of a real teacher, the facts will sparkle with 
a larger meaning. There are no facts but have leading 
strings to them, inviting us away to some holy of holies, if 
only an illuminated mind is brought to bear upon them. 

We are too fond, however, of what might be called intel- 
lectual mechanics^ as opposed to intellectual tastes. We pay 
out to our pupils carefully enumerated pilules of knowl- 
edge. The excessive analysis, and dissecting, and hair- 
splitting, and logic-chopping, into which our school life 
has tended to degenerate, defeat the ends of intellectual 
training itself and of scientific procedure. The men who 
have made scientific discoveries, who have led the world 
onward in matters of intellectual insight, have not done so 
simply because they possessed keen intellects, but even 
more because they have become enthused and intoxicated 
over truth. What we attribute to mental acumen alone is 
due quite as much to a process of mental digestion and 
assimilation on the part of those who have a longing and a 



IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS 

thirsting after outlying truth, with which they have a warm 
sense of intimate relationship. 

6. The next element of morality, and also of good teach- 
ing, will seem at first to contradict the one last discussed. 
It has reference to the importance of learning to see things 
accurately. Felix Adler has well observed in his Moral 
Instruction of Children that there is an intimate relation 
existing between the study of mathematics and science, and 
veracity and integrity. One of the highest ends of learn- 
ing is to make neat and accurate distinctions in places 
where hitherto there have been only confusion and obscu- 
rity. Morality gains for itself a solid framework when one 
learns that its laws are fixed in the solid structure of the 
universe and cannot be distorted or twisted by freaks of 
impulse or by a selfish act of will. The exact sciences, 
and all the subjects that depend upon exact relationships, 
are the best schooling for this conception of the moral law. 
The child soon learns, and the facts must be impressed 
upon him and occasionally called out explicitly, that two 
and two are four, and cannot be anything else ; that a 
straight line is the shortest distance between two points, 
and that by no turning and twisting can he make it other- 
wise ; that two parts of hydrogen and one of oxygen 
properly combined must form water or nothing ; and so on 
indefinitely. These conceptions of the fixedness and finality 
of certain relationships, which are absolutely indispensable 
conditions of right thinking and right living, are not, hov/- 
ever, truth, but tools by which we attain and use truth. 
The truth-loving and truth-seeking spirit above referred 
to continually reaches out beyond these specific relation- 
ships to that which they suggest. As we are getting freed 

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MORAL TRAINING 

from over-intellectualism in our conception of life, it is 
becoming clear that truth is a growing and not a static 
something. It is organic as the human body is organic, 
and not a mere machine. 

The habit of seeing things accurately and getting defi- 
nite notions may be cultivated not only in mathematics 
and the exact sciences, but also in a careful use of words, 
phrases, proverbs, and maxims. Professor James has right- 
fully and forcefully pointed out in his Talks to Teachers 
the connection between the right naming of things and 
right conduct. To dub drunkenness by its old familiar, 
disgraceful name, instead of disguising it by some graceful 
term like "conviviality" ; to call a willful act of evading 
a fact '' lying," and to feel the prick of its sting ; to attach 
the name of " robbery " to the kind of grafting that is apt 
to pass under the title of "lively enterprise," and allow 
the evil doer to swelter under the opprobrium, — nothing 
can be more forceful in guiding the moral life along the 
paths of rectitude. Through repetition and right emphasis 
a large stock of terms of both approval and disapproval can 
be so suffused with meaning and become so insistent before 
the minds of children that they may bring out into bold 
relief, with all its heights and depths, the field of the 
moral Hfe. Proverbs, which Professor Palmer designates 
"packed wisdom," and maxims which embody the con- 
densed experience of the race, may be skillfully used in 
focalizing the mental life so perfectly that the correspond- 
ing acts are well-nigh inevitable. 

7. Still another factor in moraUty that the schools 
may cultivate to their own profit is the integrity of the 
personahty. Synonyms of immoraUty are " looseness " and 

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IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS 

'' distraction." A person says one thing to-day and another 
to-morrow ; he promises a thing and supposes he means it, 
and without intentional dishonor will later do the contrary. 
He is at the mercy of shifting circumstances. It is per- 
haps no accident of speech that the term moral *' integ- 
rity " means ''wholeness." The Roman term ''gravitas," 
which seemed to be equivalent to our term ''character," 
embodied something of the same meaning. The life must 
be a unit ; it must be organized around dominant interests 
and guiding purposes which make it continuous with itself 
throughout all the days and in the midst of a changing 
environment. The moral person is one you can count on. 
The Indianapolis News, of May 19, 1906, says : 

A man convinced and heroically determined to abide by his con- 
victions is a match for a world of doubters and shufflers. Nor is 
there ever any difficulty in recognizing such a character. It speaks 
for itself, and draws men by its silent and ceaselessly working 
power. . . . The steadfast man is the trustworthy man, and it is to 
him that men invariably turn when the skies are black and the seas 
are white. Whether the man be a soldier, or a pilot (as old Pali- 
nurus, who, in a storm, vowed that no matter what Neptune might 
do to him he would keep his rudder true), or a statesman, this quality 
of absolute steadfastness to the task assigned is one of the greatest 
that can mark men ; but, as is usually the case with great qualities, 
it is rarer than it should be. 

The schools can work toward this terse organization 
of the personality to their own advantage. At the pres- 
ent time they are altogether too kaleidoscopic. From the 
standpoint of the pupil the day's work must seem to be a 
patchwork of almost everything. If the materials the child 
is using are entirely unrelated, the effect is inevitably in 
the direction of dissociation of his mental life. It is equally 

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MORAL TRAINING 

true that if they are well related and thoroughly organized 
within themselves, they are food for his mental life in the 
direction of unity and harmony. Whatever the subjects 
that are taught, they should not only be related more 
closely to one another, but each subject should have its 
central ideas and its plot, to which the thought of the 
child shall revert day after day. In this way the mind of 
the child may come to have continuity within itself. This 
point, which involves the entire question of the correlation 
of studies, is so well presented in C. A. McMurry's volume 
on General Method that I can do no better than refer to it 
in this connection. 

It was one of the great messages of Herbart and Froebel, 
and many of the reformers since, that the individuality of 
the child must be respected from the beginning of his edu- 
cation. In no other way can his moral and spiritual hfe be 
conserved. It is a message seemingly as little appreciated 
in our schools generally to-day as at the time when it was 
so profoundly and clearly set forth. 

How will the schools gain by adopting this principle of 
unity and coordination ? They will teach much more if they 
teach less. The mind, even during early childhood, cannot 
grasp or retain so easily disconnected material, as that 
which is related within itself or in tune with its prevaiUng 
interests. Our schools are wasting time, year in and year 
out, dawdUng with matter which to the mind of the child 
is meaningless. There is, on the contrary, hardly a limit 
to the capacity of the mind to master details that are 
seized with enthusiasm. 

This analysis of the common elements of good education 
and of morality does not mean to be exhaustive. It is 

ii6 



IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS 

complete enough, however, to suggest that for the occupa- 
tions and studies of the school to blossom into a curriculum 
whose central aim is the development of character should 
be as natural as for a healthy tree to bear fruit. 

V. The last point to consider in spiritualizing the secu- 
lar schools concerns itself with our understanding of the 
nature of children ; but there is only space for the merest 
hint. We are being taught nowadays that morality gets 
its content from the sum of instinctive endowments with 
which the individual is supplied by nature. Before the per- 
son becomes a bundle of habits, he is already a bundle 
of instincts. The personal life is a spring in which there 
well up the brute and the human instincts. The sum of 
these instincts and their particular blending give coloring 
and quality to the whole life. Indeed, life is little else than 
the sum of these instincts. They determine personality 
and character. Along with the growth of memory and 
self-consciousness they shade into motives, and with the 
power of foresight they constitute aspirations and ideals. 
The instincts not only determine character, they deter- 
mine also our entire thought life. Our systems of belief, 
our doctrines, our philosophies, are like tents that we 
carry about with us and pitch over us ; they are shifted 
and reconstructed at will. Or they are like the trellis 
which the gardener places for the vine, — important enough, 
to be sure, to a good fruitage, — while the living, growing 
vine corresponds to our instinctive life. A man's conduct 
is the outcome of the elemental forces that play through 
his life, and not the result of his logic. We shall be 
immensely wiser when we come to appreciate this simple 
truth. It is the presence of these instincts that gives to 

117 



MORAL TRAINING 

human life its depth and its breadth and its reach. " If the 
single man plant himself indomitably upon his instincts," 
said Emerson, '' and there abide, the huge world will come 
round to him." It is the interplay of these elemental endow- 
ments that gives to life its struggles, its tragedies, and its 
successes. Almost all the students of the moral life at the 
present time are teaching us that the moral instinct itself 
is the outgrowth of a conflict among the other instincts. 
The analysis of the moral impulse, indeed, shows that it 
involves a discord and an attempted readjustment either to 
one's larger self, or to the social group. It is in the midst 
of this rupture and the striving toward the higher harmony 
that the meanings of life are teased put. 

When the fight begins within himself, 

Man's worth something. God stoops over his head, 
Satan looks up between his feet, — both tug — 
He 's left, himself, in the middle. The soul wakes 
And grows. 

The highest function of the teacher is to take this germ 
of possibility, — a little child, — and cultivate its instincts 
symmetrically. A few of them will have to be repressed 
and overshadowed by others. Self-regard, for instance, 
was at one time the highest virtue ; it is still a necessary 
ingredient in virtue, and holds its place both in the Golden 
Rule and in the Ten Commandments. So far from need- 
ing encouragement, however, it is one of the chief func- 
tions of both morality and religion to hold it in subjection. 
Most forms of gross immorality center in excessive self- 
regard. 

Some of the instincts need fostering and stimulating. 
The most marked examples of this class is the group of 

ii8 



IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS 

other-regarding impulses, — sympathy, love, cooperation, 
and self-sacrifice. These have come in rather late in the 
course of evolution, and are threatened constantly by self- 
regard. They come relatively late in the life of the indi- 
vidual. Their normal blossoming time is in the teens. The 
supreme danger that threatens every human being in his 
moral development is that selfishness will become such a 
gross, ugly weed that the finer flower of love will never have 
a chance to flourish. Our schools have not yet fulfilled 
their true function if pupils have passed through the high- 
school period without the social sense having become one 
among their passions. 

The chief task with all the instincts is to bring them to 
the highest degree of refinement, instead of leaving them 
crass and bestial. This may be done by inhibiting their 
lower expression, by centering them upon higher objects, 
and by repressing them by higher forms of expression, 
— that is, by casting out the evil with the good. Fear 
may be softened into respect and reverence ; curiosity may 
be tempered into a desire to know ; self-regard and self- 
seeking should ripen into self-respect and the ideal of self- 
perfection ; anger should be suppressed until it becomes 
resentment and then righteous indignation ; self-expression 
on a purely physiological plane should, as life develops, be 
refined also into self-expression in art, Hterature, morals, 
and rehgion ; love of parents and playmates should pass 
up into a supreme devotion to all men and love of the 
Highest; and so on indefinitely. The teacher must be 
wise enough to use all these instincts of a child. She must 
suppress this one and that (the method depending upon the 
particular child with which she is deahng), by watchfulness, 

119 



MORAL TRAINING 

or disapproval, or punishment, or pictures from literature or 
history of the tragedies of evil ; she must nurture certain 
other instincts by cheerful commendation, by skillfully 
chosen stories, by poems, by plots from fiction, by examples 
from the lives of great men. She should be able to play 
upon the instincts of the child as a musician plays upon 
the keys of an instrument, and out of them produce a sym- 
phony of beauty in which every discord is taken up into a 
higher harmony. 

This paper has purposely disregarded, up to this point, 
the question of the place of ethical instruction in moral 
training, for the sake of emphasizing considerations that are 
more fundamental and at the same time more frequently 
overlooked. It should, however, be brought out into clear 
relief, though most briefly, that a teacher who is alive upon 
the question of character formation will find a place during 
all the years of school life for specific ethical teaching. In 
the earliest grades myths, fairy stories, and nature stories 
will predominate. These will pass over gradually into anec- 
dotes, fables, and stories from history and literature, with 
their " morals " omitted. By the time the fifth and sixth 
grades are reached, these may be supplemented by tales 
and readings about the life of other peoples, with chief 
reference to their social and moral customs, and by occa- 
sional reflections upon our own duties and proprieties. In 
the seventh and eighth grades, and in the high school, the 
artistic portrayal of the moral life as set forth in literature, 
history, and art, should be supplemented by thoughtful con- 
siderations upon ethics that naturally arise in connection 
with these things, and also in civil government, geography, 
history, and science. Here may well begin also some 

I20 



IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS 

systematic study upon duties, personal habits, and social 
relationships, as presented, for example, in Charles F. 
Dole's Citizen and Neighbor^ in W. L. Sheldon's Duties iri 
the Honie^ or in C. C. Everett's Ethics for Young People. 
During the third or fourth year of the high school, which 
is the people's college, any one of the simpler treatises 
upon ethics might well be studied for at least one term, 
even at the risk of crowding out a term of some literary, 
scientific, or mathematical subject. 

It has seemed worth our while to try to set forth in the 
strongest terms that, during the earliest years, character 
formation does not come about through definite ethical 
teaching, but through influencing the deeper sources of 
life and conduct that lie back of the intellect and perform 
the quality of the life. It is equally true that the abihty 
to think intelligently upon personal conduct and social rela- 
tionships should be gradually developed with the dawn of 
reason, and that it is the right of every citizen, by the time 
he reaches maturity, to be able, by the help of a wise 
teacher, to picture to himself the essential hnes of our eth- 
ical superstructure, and to appreciate for himself its basis 
in the laws of human life. 



Edwin Diller Starbuck 



State University of Iowa 
Iowa City, Iowa 



121 



IV 

I 

TWO things have been permanently settled by the 
American people : the children of the nation shall be 
educated in the public schools, and religious instruction shall 
not be given in those schools. There will doubtless be 
further discussion, but the drift of pubhc sentiment has 
been so strong and steady during the last two generations 
that the general question can hardly be reopened. The 
reasoning and passion that may hereafter be spent on the 
subject will probably not seriously affect either the statutes 
or the public sentiment of the country. The schools have 
justified themselves, and even if there were no prospect of 
further valuable improvements in the system, the people 
would cling to it in preference to any other system of edu- 
cation the world has hitherto tried. 

But a wedding does not solve problems ; it only creates 
them. A married man can no longer debate the question 
whether he shall support his family ; the marriage compact 
settled that ; the only consideration is, how he shall fulfill 
his obligation. In a similar way the time has passed when 
the public schools can shunt the people's moral problems. 
The task of furnishing moral stimulus for right Hving is 
now squarely before them. There is a steadily growing 
conviction that the moral nature of the child must be 
definitely provided for in the public schools. They will 

122 



IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS 

have to prove, by doing it, that sound moral training can 
be given without direct reHgious instruction. The field is 
clear, the people want it, and even the law provides for it, 
as witness the utterly dead California statute, which says 
that instruction in morals must be given in all grades and 
all classes during the entire school course. 

Doubtless a large amount of moral stimulus has been 
incidently injected into the spiritual arteries of our children 
with the instruments available in our schools, but a thorough 
understanding of the influence of the schools has not been 
possible because there is no way to isolate and exhibit the 
effects produced. There are so many and such powerful 
and subtle agencies at work on the moral nature of the 
child that it is impossible to say what part each has played 
in the formation of his character. If all available resources 
had been exhausted, the study of actual results would take 
on a serious aspect ; but the problem of moral training in 
the public schools has not even been seriously attacked. 
Nothing like a general effort has been made as yet to 
formulate the requirements that can properly be laid upon 
the schools, or the materials and methods with which to 
meet them. We are standing now with our feet in the edge 
of the water and shivering, like the naked little boy, more 
from fear than cold, deterred from going back by shame 
and from going in by the goose-flesh conviction that we 
shall never be able to do it. 

Swimming is best learned by going into deep water. We 
are still very far from general agreement about what things 
ought to be taught, how they should be taught, and the 
order of their teaching, in the purely intellectual work of 
the schools ; but enormous progress has been made. The 

123 



MORAL TRAINING 

right theory is working itself out of actual effort, and the 
same thing will be true of moral training. The method is 
yet unformed, and the materials are still miscellaneous and 
unclassified ; but the sooner we get rid of the notion that 
the problems of morals need to be handled in ways incom- 
patible with the spirit of the pubhc school, and the sooner 
we realize that the principles underlying moral growth are 
the same as those underlying intellectual growth, the bet- 
ter it will be for us. After all the unessential accessories 
have been brushed aside, the greatest gains left to us from 
recent developments in education are gains in conception 
and method. When once the people definitely demand that 
the teaching profession make provision for moral training, 
and the teachers apply to the task the principles already 
worked out in the intellectual field, the shivering stage 
will be passed. One of England's great economic writers 
once declared that if there should arise a strong demand for 
prima donnas, the prima donnas would appear. His predic- 
tion has come true. A worthy process of moral training in 
the public schools will emerge out of the necessity for it. 

History shows that when a people has become corrupt 
in both its conduct and its ideals, moral teaching will 
not save it ; nothing but desperate calamity can make a 
new soil for domestic and social virtue to grow in. And 
we know now, better than we did two generations ago, 
that universal education is not a panacea for moral ills : 
the citizen's ability to read his ballot is no proof that he 
will not sell his vote ; the fountain of knowledge still has 
the bitter taste of sin ; purely intellectual training may 
only put ashes in the mouths of hungry men. Neither will 
culture keep or make a people clean : the Italy of the 

124 



IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS 

Renaissance was almost perfectly equipped ; wealth was 
widely distributed, and her upper classes had culture, 
taste, and leisure, but refinement harmonized with lust. 
The very intellectual, aesthetic, and commercial qualities 
that seemed to make her great bore deadly fruit ; peace 
became a moral stench and war a bloodless farce. Pure 
women and honest men were wanting in those fateful 
times, and Italy paid the penalty of her moral disintegra- 
tion with centuries of political agony and social suffering. 

But we still have a core of moral soundness. We decline 
to surrender the old ideals to the morality of shrewdness, 
and will not give homage to intellectual greatness coupled 
with moral weakness. We enjoy the orations of Demos- 
thenes, but despise him because his record is befouled by 
the putrid fact that he was a chronic bribe taker. We 
admire Webster for his mental power, but he cannot com- 
mand the homage of the American heart as Washington and 
Lincoln have it, because when the hour of sacrifice came 
he sacrificed righteousness instead of personal ambition. 
The simple-hearted man, with the golden threads of self- 
sacrifice and heroic rectitude running through his career, 
is still the American ideal. 

History, our own experience, and the sober feeling of 
our thoughtful people, all warn us that the general welfare 
depends on integrity and purity, and not on intellectual and 
commercial power. 

II 

At the outset, moral training in the schools encounters 
grave difficulty in the feeUng that ethical lessons alone will 
not solve the people's moral problems. There is in every 

125 



MORAL TRAINING 

civilization a powerful undertow of moral tendency v/hich 
individuals as such can do little to check or change. The 
general mind drifts rather than reasons itself toward or 
away from its problems. The needs, desires, tasks, the 
reason, feeling, imagination, — all contribute to the crea- 
tion of a general opinion or common sense, which moves, 
after the fashion of a solar system, through what might 
be termed moral space. Within the mass there seems 
to be nothing but countercurrents of individual purposes, 
passions, and ambitions. The secular drift goes on for the 
most part unrecognized. If the pubHc schools are to make 
any worthy contribution to the moral training of the people, 
they will have to take into account the great moral drifts of 
the people as a whole. 

One of the most profound changes that has ever come 
over the spiritual life of civilized men is now working itself 
out. Its moral significance has been recognized only by 
thoughtful men. Scientific ways of thinking and working 
have brought with them the conviction that all things — 
physical, intellectual, social, poUtical — are subject to law. 
Under the cold light of this intellectual mood everything 
seems to lose its old moral significance. Fear of ill and hope 
of good have both suffered, and reverence has shrunk per- 
ceptibly. The tendency has not only touched the cultured, 
but it has become especially characteristic of the more 
thoughtful part of the working masses. If the moral train- 
ing of the schools is to be effective, it will have to use this 
governing tendency by doing its work on the broad basis 
of general principles. 

Another recent tendency still more seriously threatens to 
affect our older moral views. The organization of modern 

126 



IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS 

business is along impersonal lines, so that the individual 
in his business relations is brought more and more into 
contact with corporations and less and less into contact 
with the direct personal interests of men. This commer- 
cial tendency will warp the Golden Rule as surely as the 
sun will warp a birchen board. Ordinary dishonesty be- 
tween man and man will always be rightly judged ; but 
Lamb struck the key to this moral difficulty when he said, 
in *'The Old Margate Hoy," the smuggler "is the only 
honest thief. He robs nothing but the revenue, — an 
abstraction I never greatly cared about." The elimination 
of personality carries with it the temptation to eliminate 
the moral element. To transfer one of Lecky's figures, 
the danger from this insidious, corrupting notion does not 
lie merely in the possibiUty that corporations may lose 
some of their property, but that the people may, in spirit 
at least, become a band of thieves. 

The schools can meet this sagging tendency in the 
foundation of personal honesty in a corporation age only 
by strengthening the conviction that when an unrighteous 
thing is done the greatest injury falls upon the doer ; by 
estabhshing the single, gold standard of morahty on the 
motive of the doer and not on the consequences to the vic- 
tim. The effect of this commercial tendency will be the 
more inevitable and irretrievable because it is not an inten- 
tional moral influence, but a blind force, sucking the peo- 
ple's morals into its vortex. 

In Spain education is probably more nearly useless for 
the general purposes of life than in any other civilized 
country, because it runs its own course, without touching 
the great interests of the people. The real value of a 

127 



MORAL TRAINING 

country's educational system is determined by the degree 
to which it is adapted to influence helpfully the practical 
life of the population. There are several noteworthy tend- 
encies in our American life which have been clearly 
recognized and to a slight extent provided for in the 
schools. Among the most important is the effect of our 
methods of business organization on the personal life of the 
workers. The big stores, factories, and similar institutions 
have drawn the girls away from home. Even when they 
live at home while they are wage-earners, they are largely 
relieved from home duties. The economic drift is tending 
to make girls less willing and less competent to be home 
makers. In former days they cooked and sewed from 
necessity and got some training for motherhood by caring 
for brothers and sisters. It was a stern training. Although 
the schools cannot make domestic experts, they can, by 
giving the elements of domestic science, plant desire and 
awaken ability along those lines of activity that are most 
closely related to the moral welfare of the race. 

Modern manufacturing methods have strengthened the 
drift of population from country to city. No nation ever 
collapsed while it rested on the shoulders of a strong, clean, 
rural community, and none ever escaped disaster when 
that part of its population decayed. Our nation's moral 
reserves are in the country ; and if, by the kind of training 
they give, the schools can help to keep the bright, clean 
boys and girls on the farms, they can do more for the 
moral future of our country than by giving direct moral 
lessons, because there the ideal citizen will grow under 
conditions best adapted to develop confidence in the world, 
fair play for others, and a contented spirit. A country 

128 



IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS 

school cannot give an elaborate course in agriculture, but 
it can give the children the germ of desire to master the 
comphcated science of farming. A few agricultural books, 
from which a pupil can make an occasional report on 
special topics, may be the seed of future good to the 
nation, by making him an ambitious farmer, — a combina- 
tion thinker, worker, and business man. While that can be 
done the moral tone of the nation will not be affected by 
inheritance from the second best. 

What has already been said in regard to agriculture and 
domestic science applies with equal force to manual train- 
ing. It is more valuable as a moral than as an economic 
discipline, because it awakens the creative spirit, — the 
mother of hope. All these lines of training bring the 
feelings to cluster around things with which it is desirable 
they should be occupied. 

The moral feehngs take on the color of a people's envi- 
ronment and occupations as surely as a desert fauna takes 
on the desert tints. 

While I am a beggar I will rail, 
And say there is no sin but to be rich ; 
And, being rich, my virtue then shall be 
To say there is no vice like beggary. 

Even the great Protestant churches have not escaped 
this law. Slavery rent asunder the Methodist and Presby- 
terian churches as it did the nation. European and Japa- 
nese feudal systems developed appropriate moral codes. 
How could real benevolence be a virtue among the 
Greeks, where the poor were helpless not merely by 
stress of circumstances but also by law .? Race emotions 
flutter about the things that seem great to the people, 

129 



MORAL TRAINING 

and things that are least suspected undermine the people's 
morals more effectively than the vices that are openly 
recognized. The supposedly innocent old Roman games 
brutalized the people, and in the end destroyed the capac- 
ity for reasonable pleasure. History and reason combine 
to lay primary stress on the people's occupations as the 
point at which moral training should begin. 

Another tendency that calls aloud for moral training in 
the public schools, because they are the only institution 
capable of dealing with it adequately, is the American 
tendency toward moral precocity. Freedom comes early to 
the child in America and along with this freedom there is 
a growing lack of time for moral retirement for the devel- 
opment of moral fiber. One evidence of this is the way 
in which youth in school and college try to handle adult 
problems with the morals of childhood. The problem is to 
make responsibility the yokemate of freedom. 

Possibly the most important tendencies are beyond our 
power to see. There may be among them forces at work 
for moral good. We know that freedom, in the long run, is 
among these forces. There is comfort in the fact that evil 
is more easily seen than good, for the strongest forces for 
good all work underground. As has been often pointed 
out, Greek and Roman philosophers knew that their civili- 
zations were rushing to ruin, and were peering anxiously 
into the future, like a lost child in the deepening twihght, 
for some sign of direction ; but they failed to see the sig- 
nificance of the new power that was to emerge from the 
ruins of the old world. They poured out their contempt 
upon Christianity and passed it by. Nations, like men, 
move in directions unforeseen. 

130 



IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS 

III 

Democracy has brought many disappointments, but 
undreamed-of improvements have also come. An unfore- 
seen feature of our complex system of government — which 
was elaborated in the interests of freedom and for the 
safety of the individual — is its development into a maze 
in which the artful dodger can evade the purpose of the 
law. This country, far less than any other, can depend on 
its law to keep it morally sound. Moral resistance of the 
aggregate against the aggressions of financial and other 
practically lawless forms of power is the line along which 
our spiritual development will run. Roosevelt's appeal, in 
his message of 1905, was a confession that the public con- 
science must enforce the rules of righteousness. The bur- 
den of the schools is to create a spirit of moral team work, 
a social efficiency, a taste for cooperation. The possibilities 
of playground government as a moral power have been 
scarcely dreamed of yet. Experience has shown that large 
burdens which the arm of school authority has borne can 
be judiciously laid on the pupils' shoulders. 

Most of what has been said points to the notion that 
sound character results from rightly directed energy rather 
than from direct resistance to heavy temptation. The 
moral yearnings of rural communities are due in part to 
favorable conditions. In the presence of perpetual tempta- 
tion good intentions wilt like growing grain in a hot Dakota 
wind. Lecky and others have repeatedly shown that moral 
inequalities are due more to differences of temptation than 
to differences of self-control. Temptation and friction are 
both inevitable consequences of the working of elemental 

131 



MORAL TRAINING 

forces, but the best results come when both are reduced 
to a minimum. The pine tree on a windy coast is hardy 
enough, but the biting blasts have made it crooked, small, 
and ugly. Persistent moral stress in one direction will 
ruin the moral symmetry of a man or a people. Oppor- 
tunity is the gate of guilt. If the public schools are ever 
to become perfectly efficient they will have to guide the 
feet of the children away from the fields of moral stress. 
And their work will more and more be seconded by social 
forces that have no moral intentions ; as, for example, 
expert gunnery in the navy, and the commercial needs of 
the railroads, are forcing men to be sober. These coer- 
cive forces cannot effect the finer forms of virtue based 
upon good will, but they help lay the foundations for 
higher things. 

In a further special direction the school can, by its out- 
reach, not only wield a strong influence on the community, 
but increase greatly its moral power over the children. The 
schools, as constituted, are a great instrument of moral 
discipline. They must of necessity require order, regular- 
ity, promptness, self-control, obedience, quiet, industry ; 
but there is always for the pupil an element of coercion in 
the situation. The voluntary moral element can be largely 
increased by interesting the home in the work of the school. 
This cannot be done by making the teacher a home mis- 
sionary, but it has been done and can be done by making 
the school a center of local interest. The people's infor- 
mation about the schools is warped not only by childish 
malice, but by the inability of the children to report cor- 
rectly. The criticism which the home returns upon the 
school is not based upon sound judgment, and the tendency 

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IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS 

is to minimize the moral power of the school. The little 
entertainments, art exhibits, brass bands, glee clubs, please 
the people more than the work of experts ; but the most 
valuable effect of this class of school activities is to bring 
the feelings and opinion of the home to reenforce the school 
on a basis of mutual understanding. The motives for 
creating such local interest in the schools have been vari- 
ous, but the effect on the schools has always been lasting 
and good. The possibihties are yet unmeasured. The most 
hopeful aspect of the people's moral problem is the fact 
that our faces are turned in the right direction. But we 
are hardly yet prepared to realize that if the energy of 
the schools were directed into channels of activity whose 
usefulness has been fully demonstrated, we should feel a 
moral glow that is yet unknown. 

The function of the public schools is to help fit the 
children for sound hving. This involves the growth of 
right notions and the formation of right habits. Knowl- 
edge, good will, and energy are the three conditions of sound 
character. Knowledge alone is ineffective ; most men know 
what is right, but many go right on to stain their Hves with 
moral uncleanness. The real problem is, not how to pro- 
duce moral connoisseurs, but how to make moral artists, 
with creative energy and impulses. The nature of the 
moral training is conditioned by the double function of 
conscience. This distinguishes right and wrong, and pun- 
ishes the doer of the latter with remorse. At the outset 
judgment and feeling go together; but while even the 
worst criminals retain through life the power of moral 
discrimination, the impairment of moral feeling is a critical 
danger to which every one is exposed. The gravest task 

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MORAL TRAINING 

in moral training is to interweave feeling with judgment 
so that they may be inseparable. 

We are governed less by logic than by common sense, 
and our feelings constitute a large ingredient of the latter. 
They cluster round our deepest wants, and reason fails so 
often because it takes no account of them. Without them 
convictions are lifeless, intellectual formulas. For one per- 
son who leads a calculative life, a thousand are driven 
along by impulse, and the moral task is to train the feel- 
ings away from impulse and link them to permanent ideals ; 
it is the momentary motive that makes the feelings the 
unsafe guide of life. The head may reach sound conclu- 
sions, but if the feelings deal with the picnic things of life, 
dawdle with the daydreams, there is bound to be spiritual 
discord ; but when the feelings take charge of the conclu- 
sions that the intellect has reached, action will follow 
as surely as pressure upon grapes will make the grape 
juice flow. 

And not only the feelings, but the imagination needs 
definite training for moral purposes. I do not mean that we 
as a people need a busier imagination, — for it is already 
too active, — but that the imagination needs to be provided 
with solid material to work on. Sin often strikes its first 
deep roots in daydreams, but, as a rule, sin is marked by 
a deficient imagination. The criminal world is notoriously 
defective in this respect. He who lacks imagination has no 
means of making impressive to himself the things that are 
distant in time or place. He cannot reach out and think 
clearly over distant consequences, and so his impulse trots 
after every temptation, much as a pampas lamb will leave 
its mother to follow a horse. When once the imagination 

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IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS 

is powerfully enlisted in behalf of the doctrine of conse- 
quences all the virtues will breathe more freely. The knowl- 
edge which the schools have imparted has been so largely 
verbal that the imagination finds but little to work on. 
The problem, from our point of view, is that of transforming 
mere verbal grasp of moral things into something Hke 
reality ; and we shall see that the only way to make varied 
and accurate knowledge useful to the imagination is to 
subject it to the control of general principles. On the 
other hand, one real experience, like a visit to a police 
court or a jail, will give the imagination materials for con- 
templation, — types upon which to model its pictures of 
things that need to be known but cannot be seen. This 
contemplation would fill our greatest moral want. There 
are indications that nations, like men, may suffer nervous 
prostration or moral collapse if they do not let themselves 
grow drowsy. What Thoreau said of tired students is 
good for all of us ; we should be better off if we would 
honestly slumber a fool's allowance. Then there would be 
a slower and longer waking-up time in which to let the 
threads of common sense arrange themselves. 

Whatever incidental service the school may render to 
the child's present life, its chief service is intended to be 
for the child's future good, when the leading strings of the 
home have been worn thin and those of the school have 
been cut. Now at least nine tenths of our children leave 
school at the dawn of adolescence, the most critical period 
of their lives, when moral guidance is more necessary to 
them than at any other time between birth and death; 
when the methods of childhood are becoming obsolete ; 
when responsibility begins, but judgment is immature ; when 

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MORAL TRAINING 

moral storms tear up the moral growths of childhood and 
dreams float in the air ; when children seem strange to 
themselves ; when they are morally more lonely than ever 
before or afterwards ; when they must not only face the 
great temptations of life, but make its great decisions with- 
out experience ; when they least desire others to penetrate 
their thoughts or mold their judgments. The greatest 
need of this period is a moral one. What provision do the 
schools make for it ? 

It is a fact, recognized in the educational circles of all 
civilized countries, that during adolescence there is a pro- 
gressive loss of interest in the things the schools deal 
with ; there is a sense of escape, and disinclination to make 
other connections. The blame for this collapse cannot be 
laid entirely on the schools, but the moral problems of this 
dangerous period will not be solved until the individual can 
drift easily out of the school into organizations whose influ- 
ence is in the direction of clean activity. 

There are signs of great promise. A profound change 
of mood is coming over the churches ; the drift is setting 
strongly toward the Messianic notion of a redeemed earth. 
It finds expression in Chautauqua circles, institutional 
churches, and all the activities that seek to bring to the 
surface what is good in human nature. If this process works 
itself out on a large scale, and social organizations provide 
for the care of the younger people, the moral gap will 
surely close. The capacity for cooperation increases very 
rapidly in adolescence, and the moral possibilities in this 
direction have been hardly tested. By fostering this capac- 
ity the public schools can, through the organization of their 
musical, artistic, scientific, agricultural, and other interests, 

136 



IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS 

build a bridge of desire over which a large number of boys 
and girls can pass into the more juvenile forms of the 
world's organized religious and social activity. All this 
will help to avoid corruption. Moral teaching cannot save 
a people once corrupted. While Rome was enjoying the 
benefit of the purest moral teaching the pagan world had 
been able to devise, she was going swiftly to her moral 
ruin. Good doctrine by itself is not so good a defense 
against moral degeneration as is innocent activity, and the 
schools can contribute largely to the moral soundness of 
the future by directing the surging activity of later child- 
hood into channels that will open into the general stream 
of adult life. If the grown-up child can be kept under 
conditions that work automatically in favor of virtue, we 
shall no longer need to worry about his moral doom. 

The men of Finland once obeyed the law from reverence 
for it. Then came the few recent desperate years of 
Russian autocracy, and where confidence and love once 
sat, the moral vultures of suspicion and hatred perched. 
Their liberties have been restored, but they have probably 
paid the terrible moral price. Their old respect for the 
majesty of the law is only limping back, and may always be 
a cripple. And as the moral revulsion came to the men of 
Finland, so has it come to many a boy and girl. It is a 
terrible thing to have the moral faith once shocked, but 
until the schools help fill the gap between childhood and 
manhood with clean activity, their work will be largely lost 
upon the children and the shock is sure to come. Only by 
this fining of the gap can the moral results produced in 
the schools be preserved, and worthy aspiration be added 
to knowledge. 

137 



MORAL TRAINING 



IV 



Hitherto the discussion has dealt with the general con- 
ditions that will strengthen the moral power of the school 
over the child at present, and with the bearings of its work 
on the period of adolescence. The appeal has nowhere 
been made to the purely theoretical ; the effort has been 
to point out the vast moral significance of forms of school 
activity which have been amply tested, and which, chiefly 
for that reason, should be made universal elements of our 
education instead of being confined to a few favored places. 
We have now to deal more directly with the business of 
moral instruction. 

The conditions for moral instruction are even more favor- 
able in the public schools than in the churches, because the 
schools reach all the children ; and one of our greatest 
present moral needs is a general dissemination of sound 
moral thought. Moreover, the child is better equipped to 
receive moral instruction than the average adult. Children 
recognize themselves as responsible beings and do not 
charge necessity with their misdemeanors. In them villainy 
has not been perfected as in lago and Richard III, and 
none but the few pitiful moral imbeciles will say of con- 
science, with Antonio, " I feel not this deity in my bosom." 
The dicta of conscience are still authoritative ; its method 
harmonizes with the fact that authority still stands in the 
foreground of their experience. They have not yet begun 
definitely to measure vice and crime by a scale of penalties 
and a system of casuistry. Feeling still predominates over 
judgment and so the time is favorable for the training of 
both. 

^3^ 



IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS 

By the time the children leave the common schools the 
whole question of duty and its authority lies open before 
them. One of our chief concerns is to know what view of 
morals will create the greatest stability and give moral 
principles validity under all circumstances. If the general 
welfare is accepted as the only sanction of duty, its power 
breaks down at the very place where it is needed most in 
modern society. The spirit of tribal morality is inadequate, 
because the modern community is so large, and its interests 
are so complex and diverse, that there is almost nothing 
that the citizens have in common. The tendency grows 
stronger to restrict moral obligation to the affairs of those 
with whom we come in direct contact. 

Without either insisting or desiring that the rehgious 
sanctions of morality be directly taught in the schools, we 
may here admit the secret of the perennial power of the 
religious sanction of morality as it is generally understood 
in our country. It is based not on the power to command 
and the duty to obey, but on a personal, spiritual relation 
between the individual and his God, — a relation that is 
immediate, constant, and worthy, and that no changes in 
life or environment can modify. History has proved this 
Hebrew-Christian view to be the only one that can hold 
common men intellectually and spiritually true to the best 
ideals of the race. The imperative character of duty is 
based on mutual interests that are permanent and vital ; 
any other view tends to let morals drop to the level of 
calculation, where, as in the opinion of Epicurus, stealing 
is bad only through the fear of being caught. No sound 
moral condition can be established on transitory personal 
interests, and I am not convinced that we can get along 

139 



MORAL TRAINING 

without spiritual leading. We have profited so largely by 
it that we naively assume that its results are native to 
us ; but even the agnostic Huxley feared lest a genera- 
tion that had cut loose from Christian moral sanctions 
might lose its grip on the things that are worth while 
in life. The man who feels that "limping death, lashed on 
by fate," cuts off his interests in moral as well as phys- 
ical things, has no good reason to curb his impulse. The 
doctrines of God and immortality cannot be taught in 
the schools, but those of freedom and responsibility can 
be, and the others are bound to lie as moral assumptions 
beneath the actual work of the schools. Let us see what 
history says. 

The growth of this spiritual relation of the Hebrew to 
his God urged him constantly into higher moral concep- 
tions and transformed his intense tribal feeling into the 
notion of human brotherhood. His piety and reverence 
for law were no greater than those of the ancient Roman ; 
but the Roman's piety and reverence collapsed because 
no spiritual relation grew up between the Roman and his 
gods, while those of the Hebrew became universal. 

We are now face to face with tribal morality. Primitive 
nations know Uttle about virtues that include the happiness 
of all men. The Greek restricted his goodness mostly to 
his free fellow-citizens ; the mediaeval knight cared chiefly 
for those of his class ; the Crow Indian was, on his own 
plane, a moral model toward his tribesmen, and a rascal 
and thief to all outsiders ; and there is some honor among 
gamblers and thieves. Clifford frankly held that conscience 
is a tribal matter, and that, when the individual loses his 
special moral interest in the tribe, he loses his identity 

140 



IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS 

with it. But when the community and its interests become 
too large for a man's personal loyalty and too complex for 
his mental grasp, when its safety is almost beyond his help 
and he is only a minute item in its general life, the tribal 
conscience loses its grip ; duty drops to second place, and 
a man's rights forge to the foreground of his thought ; 
he becomes an outsider to every one that he does busi- 
ness with. Nemesis sits in the shadow of the tribesman, 
and the consequences of his misdeeds are simple, grave, 
and direct. In a large, complex society, politicians can 
betray their trusts, and business men can make our cloth- 
ing, food, and medicine the vehicles of fraud, because 
they are beyond easy reach of the victims. Complexity is 
the friend of impunity. And when the moral restraint 
is only external corporation morals become a stench and 
business drops to the level of the methods of the lonely, 
rapacious feline. 

But tribal morality, even with its limitations, is hard to 
kill. It develops itself in a thousand ways within the great 
group. One of its most interesting forms is that repre- 
sented by the labor union. Workingmen, believing with 
Goldsmith and the most of us that '' laws grind the poor, 
and rich men rule the law," — that the economic and social 
forces are against them, — set up the sharp and simple 
motto, " Take care of your own interests and stand by 
your own class," and maintain tribal standards of loyalty 
among themselves and of conduct toward outsiders. I do 
not believe that the tyrannical elements of the labor union 
are either necessary or valuable, but even if they are not, 
and though the popular conscience does not approve of it, 
its morality is better than feline corporation morals. 

141 



MORAL TRAINING 

If we have not already reached the apex of our moral 
progress; the work of the schools is clearly cut out for 
them by existing conditions and tendencies. Their task is 
to make forcible moral principles of universal validity. It 
is true that Christianity has not yet made good its promise. 
The typical Christian traits have hardly become our na- 
tional traits. But Christian teaching has turned into moral 
axioms things that the ancients hardly understood, and has 
laid the emphasis on those things for which all men have 
capacities and which they approve in their best moods. 
It has inculcated the virtues that make for strength and 
purity, and condemned not only the deadly sins that make 
life so vile but the little ones that make it so mean ; it has 
put the moral problem in the heart, and made the cardinal 
virtues buoyant by linking them with the Christian graces ; 
it has taught not only how to shun sin, but how to shake it 
off by repentance. And history bears witness that all the 
finest human characters have exemplified the beautiful 
moral traits on which Christianity has laid stress, and that 
therein lay their greatness. 

By laying primary stress on the infinite value of the 
human soul, Christian teaching builds a new foundation 
for self-respect. It exercises its greatest influence not by 
upbraiding vice, but by setting up a model ; not by tramp- 
ling evil, but by changing desire. It makes, not the state 
or the general welfare, but a personal spiritual relation, 
the starting point of duty. It teaches us that " self-love 
is not so vile a sin as self-neglecting," and that love for 
others is the test of brotherhood. By its old instruction, 
** Do unto others as ye would that they should do unto 
you," it tries to teach us fair play, and makes the sanest 

142 



IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS 

moral plea the world has ever heard. It deals with life as 
a struggle ; and history bears it out. Virtue runs high 
only while the people are conquering difficulties. 

While Christianity cannot and need not be taught in the 
public schools, it will be a great gain if the fact is recog- 
nized that its tendency is to strengthen the ideals on which 
alone republics can rest. Liberty rests on a foundation of 
self-control and moral responsibility. When it is recog- 
nized that the teachings of Christianity are great because 
of their validity, she can be left to take care of herself, and 
the principles of life that she lays down will be seen to be 
what all the people need and what most of them desire. 
The hopeful phase of the situation is due to the fact that 
opinion favors it. Educators could not renovate morals if 
the people approved of folly. Faust's redemption, it has 
been said, rested on the fact that the devil could not make 
him admit that evil is good. Dentatus, — thrice consul, — 
when he refused the gold of Pyrrhus while he sat by the 
hearth and boiled the turnips for his own meal, could be a 
hero only while the people approved his act. In later time 
nearly all of Rome would have called him a fool. 

V 

In order to give such moral training as will afterwards 
be effective under all circumstances, it is necessary that 
general moral principles be dealt with in the later grades. 
Instruction cannot be confined to studies of specific virtues 
merely. It is far from being true that the older children 
in the grades cannot grasp general moral principles. Noth- 
ing is more impressive to the growing mind than general 

143 



MORAL TRAINING 

principles abundantly reenforced with illustrations. The 
best proof of this is that in other school subjects general 
principles are easily dealt with. The methods now used in 
the schools are largely new. New methods, better-trained 
teachers, and revised estimates of values have within 
two decades transformed our education, and the methods 
required for moral training are the same as those that 
have been so vigorously discussed and so brilliantly applied 
in the general work of the schools. 

A special difficulty is the fact that the question of morals 
is an intensely personal one. Every wise teacher knows that 
personal applications are always dangerous, and in class 
work usually not useful ; but beyond this the whole field 
of public and private conduct will contribute materials. 
The other limitation placed upon us by the law is no 
greater than one that teachers frequently impose upon 
themselves in other matters. A thoroughly good founda- 
tion of biological knowledge can be laid down without a 
formal consideration of the principle of evolution. Indeed, 
it is better to have a good substratum of fact, and an 
understanding of the laws of structure and function, before 
the unifying, explanatory principle is formally taken up. 
Likewise in moral instruction, moral truths can be quite 
well organized and moral principles studied, without enter- 
ing seriously into the questions of the natural history of 
morals at all. Let us look seriously at the possibihties of 
moral instruction. 

The belief that retribution for wrong is a part of the 
world's constitution is the most primitive contribution to 
the world's moral thought. The Greek dramatists taught 
that it was a divine principle that the sinner should suffer. 

144 



IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS 

The friends of Job went so far as to impute sin to him 
because evil had befallen him. All the historical lines 
through which we inherit our moral thought have sent this 
doctrine down to us. 

Job could not account for his suffering, and proposed to 
do right regardless of current philosophy. Despair of moral 
justice has been the minor strain of grief that runs through 
the music of human life. We still struggle with Job's 
problem, and ask Heine's question, 

Warum schleppt sich blutend, elend, 
Unter Kreuzlast der Gerechte, 
Wahrend gliicklich als ein Sieger 
Trabt auf hohem Ross der Schlechte ? 

We know that the profit-and-loss doctrine of morality is 
not strictly true ; the righteous have been too often sub- 
jected to physical or social torture ; but whatever we may 
think of the suffering of the innocent, we not only cannot 
shake off the belief that wrongdoing will be punished 
sooner or later, but there is a general human desire that 
such punishment shall be inflicted. Children can under- 
stand requital better than why the raindrops fall. 

Without a measurable relation between wrongdoing and 
punishment there could be no society. We constantly seek 
to estabUsh such a relation in our laws and our beliefs. 
Both older and current history are crowded with materials 
for the study of every phase of the subject ; and nothing 
can affect the imagination of older children more power- 
fully than moral studies that show to what lengths conse- 
quences run through the long, dim vistas of time. Such 
studies make it clear that our " one inalienable right is 
the right to behave." 

145 



MORAL TRAINING 

Such training can furnish a permanent antidote for 
despair by a study of resourcefulness ; by teaching men 
not to chide fate but to defeat its apparent purposes ; by 
showing them how a resourceful spirit can transform the 
hard, flinty nodules of necessity into opportunities with 
which to conquer fate. And for such a purposeful study 
the records of artists, teachers, soldiers, statesmen, and 
business men furnish abundant materials. The desultory 
reference to such things merely spoils the material. 

As a supplementary study, attention can be given to the 
way in which time, the great independent variable, brings 
about the solution of our difficulties in its own uncontrollable 
way ; and for a text might be taken the stinging words of 
Epictetus, '' Art thou not ashamed to be more cowardly 
than fugitive slaves .? " If the schools fail to help us toward 
spiritual calmness they will fail to make a possible contri- 
bution to our happiness. As one of a thousand examples 
might be cited the foolish action of the Iowa harvestmen 
who smashed the new reapers from fear of losing work. 
Their fear was the foreshadowing of something which 
never came to pass. There was soon more work than 
ever. Their fear was not only selfish but groundless. 

VI 

If public morahty is to have a corrective quality, the 
moral judgment must equip itself with facts and understand 
their bearings ; the common people need both facts and 
penetrating power. What does it avail the children if they 
pass in arithmetic, and then go out into the world to be- 
come half-willing victims of fraud, and invest their earnings 

146 



IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS 

in the golden projects of promoters, to prefer patent medi- 
cine to scientific treatment, to run with faith to fortune 
tellers ? Nearly all the organs of opinion accessible to the 
people are averse to giving them true information. As long 
as hope runs after false lights there will be moral wrong. 
If there were provision for moral training the schools could 
give sorely needed information along the lines of actual 
social need. 

And out of such a study would grow another, — the 
responsibility of ignorance. As a text could be taken the 
legal principle that ignorance of the law is no defense ; and 
out of it could be brought the fact that when knowledge is 
possible, ignorance is somebody's sin. Here is the kernel 
of the moral function of the public schools. Right knowl- 
edge would make imposition difficult ; and I cling to the 
notion that a good way to make the world better is to make 
life hard for the willful impostor by correlating the people's 
knowledge with their needs. 

The ethics of public law as a study in negative morality 
is within the easy reach of children. Out of it could be 
worked the facts that public law as a rule prescribes pun- 
ishments but not rewards, and that the great body of the 
law under which we live is unwritten ; and these facts 
would open up another large field of study, which could 
be rounded off with proof that the good man is a law unto 
himself. 

Then self-sacrifice, the moral puzzle of the selfish man, 
can be made the basis of a study in both moral beauty and 
reason. When its beauty is pointed out to the children, 
and they are made to see how the world appreciates it and 
glorifies the actor, and are urged to set a right value on 

147 



MORAL TRAINING 

it, they need to be shown how deep into life self-sacrifice 
sends its roots. Neither human nor animal life is possible 
without it. Self-preservation is the first law of nature only 
when the future interests of the race are not involved. 
When the mother hen watches and fights to keep her little 
brood safe from the pirates of the sky, it is not nature's pur- 
pose to make a fool of her, but to have her protect those 
now helpless for future usefulness. The winning types are 
those whose gaze is fixed on the horizon. Personal human 
heroism is only one of the admirable forms of self-sacrifice, 
the test of which is that its benefits shall accrue to those 
who might suffer or perish without it. 

Its beauty and importance can be immeasurably height- 
ened by rearing up alongside of it a careful study of its 
slimy opposite, — avarice, 

whose gorge ingluts more prey 
Than every beast beside, yet is not filled. 

There are perhaps as many now as ever whose creed is, 
" Rich preys make true men thieves," and whose principle 
of action is that of the Bastard in King John, — 

Bell, book, and candle shall not drive me back. 
When gold and silver becks me to come on. 

And the historical materials for a study of this vice are 
only too abundant. For biographies, there are Alcibiades 
and Demosthenes, — chronic bribe takers, — and Lysander, 
who spoiled his people's character with gold; Claudius, 
who bribed his soldiers to spare his life ; and farsighted 
Eumenes who, instead of giving, borrowed money from the 
grandees who would have killed him and walked thence- 
forth in safety. From modern history, Turkey, the vilest 

148 



IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS 

government in Europe, could be shown to owe its safety to 
its debts. If in an evil moment it should pay its European 
bondholders, the great Christian nations would crush it for 
its crimes. For its effect on patriotism, attention might 
be directed to the gun makers of Birmingham, who sell 
weapons secretly to the barbarians that are fighting Britain 
openly ; and to the South African mine owners for whom 
their mother country waged unrighteous war and destroyed 
two brave nations, and who in return import Chinese coolies 
and establish semi-slavery and help bring on the political 
overthrow of the party that did their bidding. From such 
as these it can be proved that a moral fortune is better in 
old age than a financial one. It is not enough to preach 
the wrong of avarice to an avaricious people. We cure 
malaria now by draining mosquito ponds and not by gather- 
ing more Peruvian bark for quinine. So the power of con- 
tentment can be taught from the life of Dentatus and a 
thousand others. 

Promise breaking, too, could be made a wonderful study 
if the social necessity of fidehty to pledges were taken as 
the starting point. From this point of view it could be 
shown why the words '' I do hate thee worse than a prom- 
ise breaker " express the bitter Umit of contempt, and why 
men so utterly despise those who ''break their oath and 
resolution like a thread of rotten silk." A good way to 
strengthen a moral feeling is to give a reason for it. 

One of the profoundest bits of philosophy ever uttered 
is the saying, ''Whosoever hath, to him shall be given; 
and whosoever hath not, from him shall be taken away even 
that which he thinketh he hath." It is the doctrine of cu- 
mulative effects, the moral form of the law of gravitation. 

149 



MORAL TRAINING 

Herbert Spencer wrote a group of chapters to give it 
adequate treatment ; Jesus embalmed it in a sentence. 
Illustrations for it can be picked up in the street and in 
the schoolroom, seen in the running water and in the prog- 
ress of disease. A few weeks' attention to it will make it 
hiss among the facts of hfe like the whiplash of fate. The 
heavy pressure of such a principle will after a while com- 
press facts and thoughts into soUd convictions. In its pru- 
dential form every child can see that any kind of surplus 
is both a club and a shield. Mitchell's first instruction to 
the miners was that they should lay their money by as a 
weapon in the prospective strike of 1906. If properly 
presented it is all within the reach of children's minds. 

One of the noblest moral tasks that lie before the public 
schools is that of showing the fundamental reasonableness 
of the Golden Rule and of making the children see that in 
most matters decent men and women habitually practice 
the noble doctrine; that it is the basis of self-respect and 
the security of social life ; that it is only another form 
of the advice to '' put yourself in his place." And an impor- 
tant special application of it can be made to the unworthy 
judgments that we all pass on others, by showing that it 
would ehminate nearly all the personal prejudices, gossip, 
slander, heartburnings, by removing the basis of misinter- 
pretation. It would lead the way to spiritual penetration 
of the moral attitude of others. 

A whole series of moral studies could be clustered 
round Cain's old question, '' Am I my brother's keeper .? " 
The studies can be started on the commercial side. No 
end of interest can be created in the principle of mutual 
dependence by showing that practically the whole world 

ISO 



IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS 

cooperates to furnish us the materials of an ordinary break- 
fast. And when once a pupil is convinced that no man 
can live unto himself, he will be ready to follow the effects 
of evil conduct where they spread themselves '' like circles 
in the water " until they are lost from sight in the distant 
sufferings of unknown human beings ; and then he would 
be ready to consider seriously the question, "Who is my 
brother?" 

The ideals and principles that underlie a noble life are 
old and simple, and as easily within the reach of children 
between twelve and fifteen years of age as any of the other 
subjects of study. The moral weakness of the work of our 
schools is not due to the incapacity of the children but to 
the fact that moral knowledge is not carefully enough 
grouped around the general principles to which the moral 
facts belong. The doctrine of evolution has become the 
foundation of scientific thinking because the facts were 
marshaled masterfully in its behalf. 

VII 

If the work is constantly planned and given with refer- 
ence to the results that are desired, the details of method 
will take care of themselves. ''Thou shalt not" is made 
so familiar to the pupil while in school that he almost 
comes to think his name is " Johnny Don't." Rules of 
conduct have little effect in giving an endowment of moral 
desire. Just because the wicked life is easier than the vir- 
tuous one the right training of capacity has more to do 
with sound morals than moral sermonettes. Love of truth 
does not grow out of desultory conversation but out of 

151 



MORAL TRAINING 

hard and patient work. The old bark is most surely broken 
by the growth of the new. One of our best educators has 
shown how the methods of our schools repress capacity 
for social service by compelling forty pupils to study and 
recite the same lessons. Emulation and rivalry among 
the brighter ones, and a sense of hopelessness among the 
duller ones, are the moral influences that are set going. 
If each could have a separate task, he would be making 
an individual contribution. This thought involves a funda- 
mental principle. Uniform lessons have the same effect 
as military drill ; both the verve and the results of a romp 
are missing. I have repeatedly emphasized the fact that 
the chief moral work of the schools is to direct the powers, 
tastes, and desires. The tough boy cannot be taught to 
pity birds, but he can be turned into a bird lover by being 
led to take a bird census of his neighborhood and deter- 
mine their numbers, order of appearance in spring, nesting 
and feeding .habits. The little school gardens, with each 
child responsible for a plot, will cure malicious mischief 
faster than sermons. It is the difference between telling 
them and showing them. A boy will not step on an angle- 
worm while he watches the rhythmic pulsing of the blood 
along its back. The sure way to good feeling is to widen 
the horizon of the imagination and deepen the interest. 
Membership in a Uttle brass band puts the individual where 
his regularity, obedience to instruction, and cooperation 
are largely voluntary in their origin, and the moral results 
are even greater than the musical. 

The recent high-school tendency to form secret frater- 
nities, — one of the results of college influence, — which 
so many thoughtful educators hardly know how to handle, 

152 



IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS 

might, at least to some extent, be made a power for good 
by turning it toward the formation of civic clubs and vol- 
untary groups for the study of problems that the pupils 
will face in earnest later on. It would create links with 
practical life and partly obviate the doubtful expedient of 
repression. We do our best to make the children patriotic 
by means of flag and drum. Much more could be done if, 
as has been suggested, the organized celebrations of Fourth 
of July and Washington's Birthday were placed in the 
hands of the schools and their children. So much for set- 
ting the natural powers at work. 

The best friend of conscience is the habit of keeping 
alternative courses of action in mind while decisions are 
being made. This does not come from reciting lessons, but 
from putting facts face to face. It involves not merely 
accepting facts but setting a value on them. But neither 
the power nor the habit to do this is likely to come to any 
one who does not while in school learn to refer moral facts 
habitually to the great principles that govern life. Nothing 
but this reflection based on training can help the native 
human goodness to work itself out into a sound personal 
life. It is only by making our children moral thinkers that 
we can provide the basis of virtue on which alone repub- 
lics stand ; that we can correlate responsibility with our 
freedom. 

Much that has been suggested may be classed as train- 
ing in common sense. As I have said, we change our views 
less often by direct argument than because we grow tired 
or ashamed of them. What to-day looks like a justification 
for suicide may to-morrow look ridiculous, simply because 
time has shifted the pieces in the kaleidoscope of life and 

153 



MORAL TRAINING 

made the pattern of life look different. The individual is like 
the race. The safest decision is often reached by dropping 
a subject. If given time, the facts group themselves, the 
warm light of the feelings plays upon all the considerations, 
and all the elements react on each other till the problem 
no longer looks like its former self. Such training is given 
not by making children debaters, but by making them httle 
judges, so that wisdom shall become a real thing to them. 

All this the training of the schools can do. But the 
sheer goodness which is heedless of reward, before which 
the world bares its head, — like the love of Kent for his old 
King Lear, — outlasts and overtowers defeat, pain, weak- 
ness, temptation, time, and death. The moral romance of 
life is not born of any kind of learning, but of love. It 
does not seek a comfortable adjustment to circumstances, 
but treats environment and fate as incidents. But the 
training of the schools can help to make this kind of 
goodness lovable by showing that the best pleasure does 
not come by seeking it ; it can through history glorify the 
virility and goodness that do not calculate benefits ; it can 
make pupils feel truth hunger and plant in them the spirit 
of pursuit, give them the power to unravel facts and weave 
them together, and so prepare a favorable soil for the 
growth of greater things. The rest must be left to pure 
religion. 

There are those who think that such a method is incom- 
patible with reverence, but it is not ; the average child 
will never become so dry an analyst that sentiment will 
evaporate, as it sometimes does in chronic scholars. Ax 
and blasting powder are not good instruments with which 
to study the beauty of a landscape ; the eyes are best for 

154 



IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS 

that. But the method can provide for contemplation as 
well as analysis, for the heart as well as the head. 

One thing is certain : the moral fate of a highly intelU- 
gent community hangs on the answer that the people give 
to the question, '' What think ye of life, — is it a gamble, 
or a moral school .? " Is the spiritual result of life a fea- 
ture of immortality, or more evanescent than property that 
is accumulated .? Among an ignorant people the answer 
to this question might have no serious moral effect ; but if 
a cultured people look on life as the sport of fate, moral 
growth may defeat itself. Our laws have made it possible 
for a ten-year-old child to prevent the singing of Christmas 
carols in the schools. Our school children are made 
more familiar with the literature and myths of Greece and 
Rome than with the figures and literature of the Bible. 
But that cannot change the fact that in the last analysis 
moral safety and the permanent worth of moral training 
lean on a general faith in a permanent personal relation. 



VIII 

The teacher in his work as moral trainer has to deal with 
every kind of moral nature. Some children are too sensi- 
tive and need buffeting to toughen their moral fiber ; others 
are pathetic moral imbeciles. It needs a confirmed and re- 
sourceful idealist (who at the same time would get pleasure 
from moderate results) to make the opening through which 
the schools can enter upon the work of moral training. 

On the practical side there has to be faced not only the 
immense variety of moral nature to be trained and the 
question of what Hnes of effort will produce the best future 

155 



MORAL TRAINING 

moral results, but a somewhat general attitude of moral 
resistance in the schools. I refer to what in one of its 
phases shows itself as schoolboy honor. 

It will be a great gain in dealing with this business when 
it is clearly recognized that schoolboy honor is only a mini- 
ature of what is found in the outside world. The feeling 
that underlies this attitude is the same as the one that 
Lamb expressed in his remark about the smuggler. The 
pupils recognize school authority as something imposed 
upon them, in which they have none of the sympathy of 
ownership. In all history men have clung to each other 
against such authority. The sympathy invariably goes to 
the man. Defiance is no crime, but tattling is. It is coop- 
erative resistance. 

I do not believe the sentiment can be uprooted, and it 
should never be put to the test when it can be avoided. 
The surest antidote for it is a spirit of close cooperation, 
the growth of a sense of ownership on the part of the pupil 
and of the sense of self-respect that will make the individ- 
ual more willing to shoulder his own deeds. If an unavoid- 
able contest comes, a better plan than to extort evidence 
in a general way is to adopt the government's treatment of 
a mob that is not amenable to law, — to deal summarily 
with all who are likely to be guilty and let them take the 
burden of collective responsibility. In most cases, — as in 
one of college discipline with which I was familiar, — those 
unfairly dealt with will promptly bring proof of innocence, 
and the experience, instead of doing moral damage, will 
be a benefit because it gives them the chance to remove 
suspicion. A wiser plan may sometimes be to get the 
information directly from the culprit by agreeing not to use 

156 



IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS 

it, and so establish a relation of mutual confidence, as the 
famous Judge Lindsey has so often done in his Juvenile 
Court at Denver. A frank discussion of the causes of mis- 
conduct may make its future occurrence impossible. In any 
case, the effect of the direct moral instruction given will 
depend largely on the moral atmosphere created by the 
practical working of the school machinery. 

IX 

Three points remain to be briefly dealt with : the avail- 
able materials, the method of using them, and the bearing 
of the quality of the teacher on moral instruction. 

History is recognized, by all who are interested in the 
matter, as the mother lode of ethical materials. The study 
of war may nurse the heroic virtues, but the chief value 
of history as a source lies in the study of causes and con- 
sequences and of biography. A wide basis for the study 
of moral antecedents and consequences could be laid by 
studies of such materials as the explorations of the fifteenth 
century, which show so clearly how each act becomes the 
basis for a later one. What would furnish a finer moral 
study for older pupils than the fact, emphasized by Lecky, 
that during the period of their combined influence on Roman 
life. Stoicism furnished nearly every effort on behalf of 
liberty, while Epicureanism was constantly identified with 
tyranny and corruption .? A whole set of interesting his- 
torico-ethical studies could be made out of apparently dry 
materials. If our children do not receive the moral inherit- 
ance which the ages have left for them, the responsibility 
for their loss rests upon us. 

157 



MORAL TRAINING 

It is true that little children lack the perspective power 
necessary for landscape studies in history. The conse- 
quences are too long and badly tangled. But even a child 
can grasp some of the moral effects of the invention of 
the cotton gin. They can understand the units of history, 
and so biography is naturally the best material for early 
use. The judgment of the American people on Benedict 
Arnold has been for generations fixed by the children's 
early knowledge of him. The triumphs of sacrifice and the 
shame of selfishness are written in easy words in the lives 
of Washington, Burr, Webster, Lincoln, Morse. Current 
history alone would furnish material enough for studies 
in motives and consequences, but as Adler has so well 
shown, the earlier hterature of the race is better for the 
young, because it presents primary human motives in large 
outlines. 

There is no lack of material, but it is largely unselected 
and unorganized. A vast amount of it is available in fic- 
tion, drama, art, poetry, history, economics, and science, 
but no widely systematic use of it can be made until more 
work is done along the line of Adler's Moral Instriic- 
tio7i of Children. If we should ever seriously want mate- 
rials to teach the doctrine of consequences and point the 
lessons of ingratitude, an unbroken graded series for all the 
children could be arranged, from the simple story of Cain 
to the work of Nemesis in Shakespeare's Lear. 

Adler's arrangement of materials for early moral instruc- 
tion has permanent merit because it follows the well-tested 
method of ordinary school work. Fairy tales with the moral 
in solution, fables with single moral questions crystallized, 
and Homeric and Biblical characters involving interrelated 

158 



IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS 

moral traits and the interweaving of moral causes and 
effects, lie ready in abundance. Its availability for school 
use is no proof that it will be used. The sciences have 
only now come into their rights as subjects of study. 

I think the future of moral training and the use of avail- 
able material hinges on the settlement of a preliminary 
question. There has been a good deal written about the 
relative value of the formal and the incidental methods of 
giving moral instruction. If my contention is sound, that 
moral instruction to be effective must group its materials 
around general principles, the incidental method is ruled 
out of court ; because general principles can never be ade- 
quately treated by occasional references to them in the 
course of other work. The general criticism to be made 
against most of the efforts at moral instruction hitherto 
put forth in the public schools is that they have been 
ineffective just because they have been desultory. When 
they have been extensive they have produced monotony, 
as constant harping on one string will always do. The 
incidental method cannot provide definite progression. 
Instead of giving the pupil a sound grasp on moral prin- 
ciples, it merely leads him to apply such views as he 
already holds to whatever case happens to come up. 

If formal instruction is necessary in order to make the 
moral work effective, we do not have to invent new plans. 
In graded schools the supervisors of art and music have 
become almost necessities ; and their coming is nearly 
always like a morning breeze. When moral instruction 
begins in earnest it can at first be handled best by some 
one teacher, say the principal, for a building. The chil- 
dren will thus get what they need, and the teachers by 

159 



MORAL TRAINING 

degrees will learn to cooperate and grow familiar with 
the material and methods. The individual teacher's active 
part in the work will alone save it from developing, in the 
pupil's eyes, into professionalism. 

I do not think it would be advisable to have the children 
use graded text-books in morals, but the teacher needs to be 
equipped with a systematic method, and materials adjusted 
to the grades. The studies can be varied in form by means 
of formal talks, conference, reading, a study of principles 
and cases, without much casuistry, and with no hairspUt- 
ting at all. When such instruction is given by the Hving 
voice once or twice a week it will come like music, — as a 
relief, — and will meet with cooperation on the part of the 
pupils, if the amount of analysis is carefully graded to 
their capacity. That, at least, has been the result in the 
comparatively few known experiments that have been made 
with a clear grasp of means and ends. There is really 
nothing in our experience to cause discouragement. Even 
the Sunday schools themselves have failed chiefly through 
their addiction to desultory methods. Instruction founded 
carefully on general principles, given by the living voice, in 
an atmosphere free from the spirit of recitation and ex- 
amination, in a period consecrated to the contemplation of 
life and its meaning, could not fail to affect personal life 
to some extent ; and even if it did not, it would give a 
form of intellectual stimulus that it alone can provide. 

The most serious handicap to sound moral training in 
the schools has been and is our point of view. The ideals 
of the profession find formal expression in the examination 
system, and the pressure is so great that way that it leaves 
neither time nor desire to devote to a kind of work whose 

160 



IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS 

results cannot be easily measured. There is a latent moral 
power in our half million common-school teachers that we 
have hardly tested yet. When they become fully conscious 
of it themselves they will be the American prophets of 
morality. 

Even when we are fully agreed on what moral training 
shall be given, we have only stated the problem. The solu- 
tion depends on the moral quality of the teacher. Earth's 
greatest religion was made so by the example of its foun- 
der. At the end of its long historical vista stands his great 
personality and dissolves all moral questions into a personal 
relation. And children are like men, — their working ideals 
are personal derivatives. We Americans like to repeat the 
names of our famous teachers, but we cannot forget that 
their power was a moral one. The first step toward clean- 
liness is to make the victim feel dirty. " Thou wouldst do 
them good, — then do not chatter to them, but show them 
in thyself what manner of men philosophy can make." 
Moral enthusiasm is the leaven of the school as well as of 
society. Children are the first to recognize both disinter- 
ested service and its opposite. A teacher who has her hat 
and gloves on when the dismissal bell rings cannot give 
moral training. 

We reject moral looseness but do not yet definitely 
require moral power in our teachers. We have made great 
strides. Ascham says what applies as well to later times, 
that eminent Englishmen chose carefully the trainers for 
their horses, but were indifferent to the moral quality of 
those who trained their boys. We do better now. The 
teacher's profession is no longer a last resort. We have 
traveled a long way since Epictetus naively asked whether, 

i6i 



MORAL TRAINING 

if the worst should come, a man could not transcribe writ- 
ings, teach children, or be a doorkeeper. We now insist 
upon sound and abundant knowledge, clear thinking, and 
power of exposition in a teacher of intellectual things. The 
time has come when we need to add to these requirements 
familiarity with the moral history of our civilization, with 
ethical principles and sanctions, and with the bearings of 
art, science, literature, economics, and history on practi- 
cal morality. 

And there are signs of great promise. The teachers of 
the country are becoming more highly organized, and there 
is coming to the surface and spreading itself over every 
phase of the teacher's work and relations to the public an 
ethics of the profession. The National Education Asso- 
ciation has developed great moral influence, and is con- 
cerning itself earnestly with moral problems. Through 
these organizations there is coming a conscious recogni- 
tion, by the educational forces, of the nation's moral drift, 
and a conviction that the trend of school work should be 
in a direction to meet and mold the social conditions out 
of which a people's morals grow. Just now, in this time 
of promise, we need greatly a few inspiring books that deal 
with moral history, means and ends and methods for the 
schoolroom, — books not for the pupils but for the teachers. 
When some master comes, as Andrew D. White came into 
the field of historical teaching at Ann Arbor, he, too, will 
make great things easy in the field of moral training in the 

public schools. 

Frank Cramer 
Palo Alto, California 



j6? 



V 

How can more efficient moral training be given in the 
public school ? 

A manufacturer seeking to increase the efficiency of his 
plant may well, first of all, take an inventory of the work 
actually done ; second, study what is being done in other 
factories making the same or a similar product; third, 
consider what contribution to efficiency may be made by 
scientific principles not yet applied or only imperfectly 
applied ; and finally formulate a plan of procedure on the 
basis of this comparative and scientific study. 

While moral training is not a mechanical process com- 
parable to that of the factory, but is rather a process of 
growth and development, the application of sound busi- 
ness common sense is equally necessary. It is proposed in 
this study to consider briefly the ways in which Ameri- 
can public schools to-day contribute to moral training; to 
examine the provisions for moral training made by the Ger- 
man, French, and English pubhc schools ; to bring together 
from these sources the significant facts and principles 
which, in the light of genetic psychology, are most fun- 
damental in moral training, and on this basis to propose 
a plan for making such training more effective in the 
public school. 



163 



MORAL TRAINING 



IN AMERICAN SCHOOLS 



Lack of uniformity is the first thing which impresses 
one who attempts to consider the contribution of American 
schools to moral training. American public education is 
fundamentally a local matter. 

Several states, however, have attempted to provide for 
moral training in their schools. The laws passed for this 
purpose vary, from that of North Carolina, which merely 
requires that teachers shall '' encourage morality," to that 
of West Virginia, which charges '' all teachers, boards of 
education, and other school officers with the duty of pro- 
viding that moral training for the youth of this state 
which will contribute to securing good behavior and man- 
ners, and furnish the state with exemplary citizens." It 
is obvious that these laws are commentaries on the art of 
lawmaking, rather than actual forces for moral training 
in the schools. 

Some states have made Bible reading in the school a 
subject of legal enactment or judicial decision, nine pre- 
scribing it, twelve giving it a legal status, and five forbid- 
ding it. These regulations, particularly those forbidding 
Bible reading, are more generally enforced than those con- 
cerning moral training. 

All of the states affect, in a slight degree, the efficiency 
of their schools for moral training (except the schools of 
those cities which examine their own teachers), through 
the standard of attainment required of teachers in order to 
secure the teaching certificate. The state provisions for 
the removal of immoral teachers by local authority, and for 
the prevention of saloons and immoral houses locating near 

164 



IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS 

school buildings, also have some bearing on the moral effi- 
ciency of the school. 

Aside from these limitations, each city, town, or rural 
school district is a law unto itself as far as the moral influ- 
ences of its schools are concerned. 

In a few cities the school board and superintendent pro- 
vide, as at Anderson, Indiana, for an extended systematic 
course in moral instruction. In other cities the board, in 
its printed regulations, calls the attention of the teacher to 
the importance of making each part of school life count 
for moral training, and provides him with a syllabus on 
ethics suggesting how this may be done. New York City 
is an illustration. Other city boards leave their teachers 
without printed regulations or suggestions of any kind, the 
superintendent bringing the question before them from time 
to time in teachers' meetings or by circular letter. In still 
other city schools, and in nearly all village and rural schools, 
the matter is entirely in the hands of the individual teacher, 
and whatever is done for moral training must be done on 
his initiative. 

Consequently the direct moral instruction actually given 
in the schools varies greatly. Nearly all teachers devote 
the first few minutes of the day to '* opening exercises." 
Most of them — about seventy-five per cent — use Bible 
readings, or the Lord's Prayer, or both, along with reli- 
gious or patriotic songs, for these exercises. Some give 
short ethical talks, or read stories containing moral les- 
sons. Many have their pupils learn proverbs, mottoes, 
precepts, or short selections from literature which have a 
moral import. Some take advantage of every opportunity 
which the regular lessons afford to point a moral. Others 

165 



MORAL TRAINING 

give a few earnest words of moral instruction whenever an 
incident of school life offers a favorable opportunity. Most 
teachers use several of these means for giving direct in- 
struction in morals. Few, if any, schools are entirely with- 
out such instruction, although a formal course of study 
is rarely followed. In a word, direct moral instruction is 
nearly always incidental and unsystematic. 

But American educators rely chiefly on indirect means 
for moral training. Let us examine some features of the 
public school which are indirectly significant as regards 
moral training. 

Prominent among these is the lack of professionally 
trained teachers. Hughes calls this the weakest point in 
the American school system. Even in Massachusetts, 
which heads the list, less than half the public-school 
teachers have had a normal-school course. Taking the 
United States as a whole, not one city teacher in four has 
received such training, while in many states where the 
population is chiefly rural less than half have received 
any education whatever beyond the grammar grades. 
Very few high-school teachers, even in the larger cities, 
have had any professional training. Besides this, many 
teachers who graduated from so-called normal-school 
courses attended institutions whose chief aim was to pre- 
pare for teachers' examinations rather than for teaching. 
Teachers' associations and institutes, summer schools, 
reading circles, etc., have done much to supplement the 
work of normal schools, but are by no means a substitute 
for it. Moreover, the brief professional life of the Ameri- 
can teacher, said to be five years, — indeed, for the rural 
teacher, only two years, — shows that schools are largely 

i66 



IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS 

in the hands of those who lack the training of experience 
as well as that of the normal school. The significance of 
this situation for moral training in the school is perhaps 
sufficiently obvious without comment, but it will appear 
more clearly later. 

A second feature of the American school having an 
important bearing on moral training is the predominance 
of female teachers. Statistics of the Bureau of Education 
show that nearly three fourths of public-school teachers 
are women. In many states the percentage is much larger, 
— Massachusetts having ten female teachers to one male. 
The Moseley Educational Commission expressed alarm at 
*'the growing preponderance of women teachers," one 
member lamenting that ^' the boy in America is not being 
brought up to punch another boy's head, or to stand hav- 
ing his own punched in a healthy and proper manner." 
German critics maintain that our schools are training a 
race of effeminate men, lacking in virile, aggressive quali- 
ties. Prominent American educators take the same view 
and plead for more male principals and teachers in the 
higher grades, especially in the high school. 

The organization and management of the American 
school, moreover, have an important bearing on moral 
education. In the main, the organization is such as to 
give the teacher a great deal of independence and to 
encourage initiative and a feeling of responsibility, though 
in some city systems nearly everything is prescribed and 
outlined by central authority. Where the teacher has a 
fair degree of freedom his management generally provides 
an atmosphere favorable to free and natural development 
of the moral nature. The relations between teacher and 

167 



MORAL TRAINING 

pupil are more intimate and friendly than in the schools 
of any other great nation. Discipline is more incidental 
and based on interest in the work of the hour. Practically 
all members of the Moseley Commission report that they 
were greatly impressed by these two things, — the rela- 
tions between teachers and pupils and the dependence of 
discipline on interest. Both of these give free play to the 
personality of the teacher, on which H. Thistleton Mark, 
the eminent English educator, after extensive study, con- 
cluded was placed the chief reliance for moral training in 
American schools. It must be confessed that both Mr. 
Mark and the Moseley Commission visited only our better 
schools, but they unquestionably hit upon characteristic 
features. 

American methods of teaching place much responsibil- 
ity on the pupil, leave a great deal for him to work out for 
himself, and thus serve better than European methods to 
develop self-reliance and initiative. 

The regular studies of the curriculum — especially read- 
ing, history, literature, manual training, and nature study 
— are generally conceded to have an important bearing on 
moral training. But in the main the subjects taught in 
the American school are not different from those taught 
in Germany, France, and England, — though a German 
writer, Gizicki, has pointed out that American school 
readers are richer than those of Germany in moral inci- 
dents from current life. The hero of the American reader 
is more apt to belong to the present generation and to have 
risen from the ranks of the common people, while the hero 
of the German reader is of royal blood and of a generation 
or more ago. 

i68 



IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS 

The fact that American pubHc schools are not class 
institutions, as are those of Europe, but institutions in 
which the children of rich and poor aUke mingle, has its 
significance for the development of social and democratic 
virtues. 

There are also many features of American schools, less 
common than the above, which have a place in character 
building. Among these may be mentioned schoolroom 
decorations, pupil organizations in the higher grades and 
the high school, physical training, — including games and 
athletic activities, — efforts to influence the out-of-school 
reading of pupils, school gardens, the '' school city " and 
other cooperative means of school government. Here 
again it must be remembered that none of these is exclu- 
sively American, though some are more highly developed 
here than elsewhere. More will be said of these later. 

IN GERMAN SCHOOLS 

In German schools no provision is made for formal in- 
struction in morals. There is, however, in every grade 
of schools below the universities, very definite and very 
direct instruction in religion. 

The aim of religious instruction is frankly stated to be, 
in the higher schools. Christian leadership ; in the common 
schools. Christian citizenship. But, as will be seen later, 
*' Christian" is interpreted very largely in terms of dogma 
and mysticism. 

The instruction is always sectarian in character, — in 
most schools Lutheran, in many Catholic, in fewer Jewish ; 
seldom anything else than these three. Every pupil is 

169 



MORAL TRAINING 

expected to receive religious instruction ; respect must 
be paid to the religious preferences of the parents ; the 
instruction must be given by a teacher approved by the 
state. Practically all the teachers have had the advan- 
tage of a three-year training course in which religion occu- 
pied a prominent place. 

In the people's (or common) schools, religious instruction 
is given four hours per week throughout the course. Dur- 
ing the first two years the teacher tells the pupils Old- 
and New-Testament stories, and teaches them many Bible 
texts and a few hymns. Then follows a connected and 
more detailed course in Old- and New-Testament history. 
Later, much time is devoted to church history, including 
history of the apostolic church, the church fathers, the 
development of Christianity during the Middle Ages, the 
introduction of Christianity into Germany, and the Reforma- 
tion. The Reformation is studied in great detail in the 
Lutheran schools. In these schools, too, Luther's cate- 
chism is taught from the first, and is used as a basis for 
doctrinal instruction. The Bible is read in the class. The 
church sacraments are explained, and the origin and mean- 
ing of special church days are pointed out. Throughout 
the course pupils are required to commit many passages 
of Scripture and sacred songs. According to Schmidt's 
Encyclopaedia the child leaves the people's school at the 
age of fourteen with a memory stock of at least three hun- 
dred and fifty Bible texts, thirty-five Christian hymns, the 
five chief articles of the catechism, and the seventy-three 
responses of his confirmation book. 

In the higher schools, which receive boys at nine and 
offer them either a six- or a nine-year course, rehgion is 

170 



IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS 

taught three hours per week the first year, and two hours 
per week each of the succeeding years. In general outUne 
the course of the higher schools does not differ materially 
from that of the people's schools. It is, however, much 
more comprehensive in character : it includes far more 
advanced work in church history and dogma, adds theology 
and the theory of Christian ethics, is more critical and scien- 
tific, and besides is taught by men of university training. 

It is hardly necessary to say that this course of study 
abounds in material that is of little or no value for moral 
training. Many of the facts of Biblical and church history, 
much of the catechism, the church calendar, dogmatic 
theology, and church creeds belong to this list. 

On the other hand, the course is enormously rich in 
ethical content. It brings before the pupil the moral 
teachings of the entire Bible, — the stern commands of 
the Decalogue, the fervid exhortations and denunciations 
of the Prophets, the sublime moral principles of the Christ. 
It includes also numerous examples of moral heroism and 
moral cowardice, and frequent illustrations of rewarded vir- 
tue and punished wrong. Again, it brings under tribute the 
ethical content of church history. True, this has its dark 
moral side, but it presents also many illustrations of force- 
ful moral character, high ideals, self-sacrificing altruism, 
heroic devotion to the principles of Christian morality. 

Moreover, aside from its ethical content, much of the 
purely religious training which this course affords is tre- 
mendously important for the moral life. The beliefs that 
God knows the thoughts and motives of the human heart ; 
that it is possible to draw upon the infinite resources of 
Heaven for help in moral crises ; that divine forgiveness 

171 



MORAL TRAINING 

of sin may be secured upon repentance, confession, and 
faith ; that a heaven of reward or a hell of punishment 
awaits the soul at the close of this life, — have been and 
are powerful factors in determining human character and 
conduct. In fact, religious instruction in German schools 
rests on the assumption that these doctrines are the basis 
of morality. 

But the value of a course of study, either for intellectual 
or moral culture, is not determined wholly by its content. 
It depends also upon its relation to the life of him who 
pursues it and upon the manner in which it is presented. 

There are many indications that the course of study out- 
lined above is not closely related to the lives of German 
pupils. A casual reading impresses one that it would give 
knowledge about the Christian religion rather than implant 
a vital religious faith or cultivate practical morality. Many 
of the clergy complain that the religious instruction in 
the schools lacks vitality. Teachers of the higher schools 
insist that there is too much pure memory grind, too much 
catechism and dogma, too much Jewish and church history ; 
that these become a burden to the pupil and defeat the 
very purpose for which they are given. Professor Kirschner, 
of Berlin, expresses a feeling quite general among higher- 
school teachers of Germany when he refers to the religious 
instruction given in those schools as a " surfeit of religious 
doctrines, maxims, hymns, forms, ceremonies." A recent 
writer thinks it would not be far wrong to summarize Ger- 
man opinion thus: ''Instruction in religion is absolutely 
indispensable, but the existing instruction is completely out 
of harmony with the best thought of the day and stands in 
need of radical reform." 

172 



IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS 

Nor can it be said that teachers generally present the 
religious instruction effectively. A large and growing 
class treat it intellectually, much as arithmetic or history. 
Another, gradually diminishing, class present it in an 
extremely devotional manner, — every passage of Scrip- 
ture studied is inspired, and has some special significance 
for the pupil. Many combine in varying proportions the 
intellectual and devotional treatments. A constantly increas- 
ing number of the best-trained teachers, especially in the 
higher schools, are out of sympathy with the rigid ortho- 
doxy of the course of study, and disbelieve much that they 
are required to teach. Such teaching lacks vitality, to say 
the least. A German scholar said to me recently : ** Reli- 
gion as taught in the Berlin gymnasium which I attended 
had nothing to do with life. Its teaching killed the reli- 
gious spirit, and did not encourage morality." On the other 
hand, many of the teachers in the people's schools are 
sufficiently in sympathy with the course of study, and pos- 
sess the necessary sense of responsibility for the moral and 
spiritual welfare of their pupils, to make their religious 
teaching vital. But the vital element is the teacher's 
personality. 

German schools also do much indirectly for moral train- 
ing. Among the most prominent features contributing to 
this are (i) the predominance of male teachers, (2) the 
influence of militarism, (3) thorough professional training of 
teachers, (4) the German method of instruction, (5) absence 
of games and play, (6) large classes. Only three of these 
can be elaborated here, and they very briefly. 

Most of the boys and many of the girls never come under 
the influence of women teachers. In the higher schools for 

173 



MORAL TRAINING 

boys all the teachers are men. In the higher schools for 
girls the teaching force is nearly equally divided between 
the two sexes. In the people's schools about eighty-five 
per cent of the teachers are men. The significance of this 
situation for moral education must remain to a consider- 
able extent an open question, even when much more shall 
have been ascertained than is now known concerning the 
psychology of sex. But, granting only sex differences on 
which psychologists are most generally agreed, the pre- 
dominance of male teachers in the German schools stands 
for the cultivation of egoism rather than altruism, of selfish- 
ness rather than self-sacrifice. It lends support to stern 
and rigorous discipline. It tends to cultivate courage and 
regard for truth. It emphasizes law, authority, and force, 
as motives of conduct, rather than love and desire to please 
the one in authority. It stimulates independence and ini- 
tiative rather than their opposites. 

Militarism, a marked feature of German life, exercises 
a profound influence on the moral training of the schools. 
Says Russell : 

Germany is nothing if not military. The school system is per- 
vaded by the military spirit ; many of the teachers are reserve officers, 
most of the pupils hope to be, and all know that army service awaits 
them at the end of the school days. 

Russell is speaking particularly of the higher schools, 
but the military spirit is equally strong in the people's 
schools. A precise military air and an exacting military 
discipline prevail. These require prompt, unquestioning 
obedience. They emphasize strict attention to the task in 
hand. They cultivate respect for authority. They magnify 
the ofifice of the teacher and intensify his official influence. 

174 



IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS 

On the other hand, they are Uttle in sympathy with the 
triviahties and weaknesses of child hfe. They emphasize 
a perfect organization more than individual differences. 
They repress, rather than cultivate, moral independence 
and initiative. They tend to prevent amiable relations be- 
tween teacher and pupil, a fruitful source of moral influence. 
To quote Russell again, ^' Good masters have remarked to 
me — and I am inclined to credit the statement — that 
the average schoolboy considers an amiable teacher as a 
prodigy, fit only for a girls' school." 

German teachers receive a more thorough professional 
training than any other teachers in the world. The aspir- 
ant to a position in a higher school must first complete a 
higher-school course. He then spends at least three years 
in university study. This is followed by the state examina- 
tion. If successful in this the candidate enters upon a two- 
year pedagogical course, — one year of it theoretical and 
one year practice work. He is then ready for appointment, 
which, however, comes to the average candidate only after 
nearly six years of waiting, spent usually in assisting or 
tutoring. Teachers in the people's schools are required to 
have had six years of training — three years of it distinctly 
professional — after having completed the course of the 
people's school. As a result, German teachers give their 
pupils a more rigorous and exact intellectual training than 
any other body of teachers in the world. And Harris, 
De Garmo, Huling, and many others have pointed out 
that the regular intellectual work of the school exercises 
great influence in the development of such moral qualities 
as accuracy, thoroughness, truthfulness, conscientiousness, 
persistence. Moreover, because of superior professional 

175 



MORAL TRAINING 

training, German teachers make few mistakes, according to 
German pedagogical ideals and methods, in management, 
discipline, and teaching, — few of those pedagogical blun- 
ders common among untrained teachers, some of which are 
positively immoral in their influence upon pupils. 

IN FRENCH SCHOOLS 

France has made a more serious effort than any other 
great nation to develop character through her pubHc 
schools. The means chosen is direct moral instruction on 
a secular basis. 

The time devoted to moral instruction in the primary 
school is, for elementary and intermediate grades (ages 
seven to eleven), one hour per week, and for the superior 
grade (ages eleven to thirteen), one and a half hours per 
week. In general, this time is divided into three equal 
periods, and apportioned to the first hour of alternate 
school days. In higher primary schools the time is also 
one and a half hours per week. The Lyc^e and communal 
college, corresponding to the German higher schools, re- 
quire one hour of ethics per week for two years. 

Since less than a hundred and fifty thousand pupils 
attend the public higher schools of all kinds, and about 
four million attend the public primary schools, and since 
conditions in the former are far less favorable to moral 
training than in the latter, we shall fix our attention chiefly 
on the primary school. 

It has been said that the moral instruction rests on a 
secular basis. Duty and conscience are the key words. 
The sanctions of morality are to be found in duty, not in 

176 



IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS 

religion. Duties toward God are included in the ofificial 
programme, but no church creeds or catechism are taught. 
As a matter of fact, duties to God are given but little 
space in the text-books, and appear to be passed over 
lightly in the teaching, if taught at all. 

The great majority of teachers have spent two hours per 
week, during the two years of their normal-school course, 
in the study of *' psychology, morals, and pedagogy," as 
special preparation for this work. The teacher at work is 
provided with elaborate instructions and suggestions con- 
cerning the task of moral instruction. He is given a care- 
fully outlined course of study, or ''official programme," 
and his pupils are, in general, provided with text-books 
prepared according to this official programme. There are 
in reality three such programmes, — one for each of the 
divisions of the primary school. 

The elementary programme (ages seven to nine) is 
chiefly suggestive. The teacher is to engage in familiar 
conversations with the pupils and to read to them moral 
examples, precepts, parables, and fables ; also to direct 
practical exercises tending to put morality into action in 
the class itself (i) by individual observation of the pupils' 
characters, (2) by intelligent application of school discipline, 
(3) by incessant appeal to the feelings and the moral judg- 
ment of the child, (4) by correcting false notions, supersti- 
tions, prejudices, etc., (5) by having children present, from 
their own observation, illustrations of such vices as drunken- 
ness, idleness, and cruelty. 

The programme for the intermediate classes (ages nine 
to eleven) — the heart of the entire course — is more defi- 
nite. It treats of (i) the child in the family, — duties toward 

177 



MORAL TRAINING 

the parents, grandparents, brothers, sisters, and servants ; 
(2) the child in the school, — dociUty, assiduity, work, 
duties toward teacher and fellow-pupils ; (3) la patrie, — 
duties toward la patrie and society ; (4) self -duties toward 
the body (sobriety, cleanhness, and temperance), duties 
toward exterior goods (economy, avoidance of debt, work), 
duties toward the soul (veracity, sincerity, personal dignity, 
self-respect, modesty); (5) duties toward other men, — 
justice, charity, kindness, fraternity; (6) duties toward 
God, — reverence, obedience to God's laws as revealed in 
conscience and reason. 

The superior programme (ages eleven to thirteen) pre- 
sents a more comprehensive treatment of duties toward 
the family, society, and la patrie. 

This programme of moral instruction as a whole is 
perhaps as comprehensive and rich as can be found any- 
where. Moreover, it contains Uttle that is not important 
for the moral life. It is a careful and complete outline 
of moral duties. 

It should be noted, however, that it is an outline of moral 
duties rather than a course of study suited to children of 
public-school age. The men who arranged the programme 
seem to have been thinking of moral citizens, not of moral 
children at each stage of their development. It is as if, 
knowing from their own experience and observation what 
qualities are desirable in adults, they had said, ''Go to; let 
us arrange a programme in moral instruction which empha- 
sizes all these qualities, and, when our children are grown, 
we shall have noble citizens." Whether the thing to be 
taught is related to the life of the child is of little conse- 
quence, so long as it is likely to be important to the man. 

178 



IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS 

Again, there is lack of harmony between the most funda- 
mental parts of this course of study — those dealing with 
duties to self — and the organization and management of 
French primary schools. France affords the anomaly of a 
programme of moral instruction suited to a republic and a 
school organization adapted to an absolute monarchy. The 
teacher is expected to instruct his pupils in initiative and 
self-reliance, but the strongly centralized school system 
forbids him to exercise either of these admirable qualities 
himself, and the discipline generally maintained prevents 
pupils from putting this teaching into practice. Personal 
dignity and self-respect are to be taught, but neither is 
possible in any high degree to the teacher, whose duties 
are so minutely prescribed that the Minister of Education 
at Paris can tell exactly what is being done at any given 
instant in every school in France. Both qualities are hos- 
tile to the dominant spirit of French life, — militarism. 

Most of the text-books on morals follow rather closely 
the intermediate programme. Their chief differences are 
in method of presentation. One of the books most widely 
used — having reached its forty-eighth edition in 1904 — 
is divided into thirteen chapters. Each chapter consists 
of a number of moral, hygienic, or business precepts and 
definitions, a resume to be committed to memory, a group 
of references to be read in the supplement and copied, a 
few subjects for pupils' compositions, and several pages of 
Uttle stories, apparently written by the author, illustrating 
the teachings of the chapter. There are also questions at 
the bottom of the page, numbered to correspond with the 
duties enumerated on that page. An occasional quotation 
from the laws of France appears among the precepts. 

179 



MORAL TRAINING 

There can be no doubt that this book serves to fix in 
the child's mind many statements of moral duties, distinc- 
tions, and resolutions. The composition exercises, and 
especially the abundant illustrative material, must serve to 
give this memory stock greater permanence and meaning. 
But the book as a whole has a mechanical, precept, ques- 
tion-and-answer air about it which robs it of vitality. Many 
of its teachings, for example those concerning marriage, 
are far beyond children nine to eleven years old ; others 
never will have interest except for those few who engage 
in particular occupations ; many others deal with business 
success rather than with morahty. While some of the 
illustrative material is valuable, much of it is fanciful, 
inaccurate, and trivial. No attention appears to have been 
paid to the stages of child development. 

Other text-books, less widely used than the above, have 
less of the question-and-answer character, and use illustra- 
tive material selected from the best literature. Some also 
introduce proverbs and memory gems. The one thing 
common to all is an abundance of precepts and definitions. 
Books of the general type described above appear to be 
most popular because most mechanical. 

But how do teachers actually use the programme and 
text-books } How are the lessons presented .? This, of 
course, varies greatly with different teachers. M. Pierre, 
director of the normal school at Saint-Cloud, outlines the 
method usually followed : '* The plan of the lesson is writ- 
ten in advance on the board. The lesson is developed and 
explained. A resume is dictated. A selection illustrating 
the resume is read. A maxim is given in conclusion." But 
these are only formal steps, untouched by the personality 

1 80 



IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS 

of the teacher. Is the teaching perfunctory and mechan- 
ical, or is it vital and stimulating ? 

A large number of primary inspectors' reports quoted 
by Lichtenberger in 1889 indicate that at that time the 
great majority of the moral teaching was perfunctory and 
mechanical. Said one inspector, '' The teachers lack capac- 
ity and conviction." Said another, " The lessons too much 
resemble ordinary lessons ; they lack the emphasis of 
conviction and sincerity which belongs to true moral 
instruction." One inspector made the statement that 
moral instruction did not exist in the schools under his 
inspection, and then added significantly that he heard a 
teacher trying to explain to seven- or eight-year-old girls 
the distinction between soul and body. According to most 
reports, however, a few teachers under each inspector were 
able to give the moral instruction in an efficient manner. 

M. Pelisson, writing of the situation in 1900, quotes 
much more favorably from several inspectors. One says, 
*' Of all the different subjects taught in the schools, la 
morale has, in the past ten years, made more serious prog- 
ress and given better results than any other." Undoubt- 
edly there has been great improvement since the very 
unfavorable reports of 1889; but an American professor 
of education, after a recent careful inspection of French 
primary schools, characterized their moral instruction as 
*' absolutely wooden." 

Turning from direct instruction, let us note a few of the 
indirect forces which affect character. In France, as in 
Germany, there is, as far as possible, separation of the 
sexes in primary schools, the boys being taught by men 
and the girls by women, about half the teachers being of 
each sex. 

181 



MORAL TRAINING 

The military influence is also strong in French schools. 
The entire school system is centralized, officered, and con- 
trolled much Hke a great army, with the Minister of Edu- 
cation as commander in chief. French writers speak of 
education as a war against ignorance. Official courses of 
study sent out from the Minister's office fix the work to be 
accomplished by each teacher. All this, together with the 
influence of three years' military service required of each citi- 
zen, makes school discipline military in character. It makes 
the teacher a subordinate officer, whose chief business is to 
carry out the orders received from headquarters. It crushes 
out originality and initiative in teacher and pupil alike, and 
forbids development of moral selfhood. It subordinates 
the interests of the individual child to the perfect working 
of a great machine. It cultivates obedience to authority, 
but an obedience that is unreasoned and mechanical. 

French teachers are less thoroughly trained than German. 
Secondary teachers receive no professional training. Most 
primary teachers have had a three-year normal-school 
course, but it is less professional in character than is the 
German, and is preceded by less thorough preparation. 

Patriotic mottoes and moral maxims commonly adorn 
the walls of the primary school. There is also posted in a 
conspicuous place in each class room a copy of the law 
forbidding corporal punishment. 

Competition and rivalry are greatly encouraged by the 
awarding of many prizes and medals. On the other hand, 
self-emulation is stimulated by the use of the cahier, an 
exercise book owned by each pupil, and taken from grade 
to grade as he advances. In this book the pupil writes an 
exercise at regular intervals, for the sake of comparison 
with earlier exercises. 

182 



IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS 

IN ENGLISH SCHOOLS 

In England, as in Germany, provision is made for direct 
moral instruction only in connection with religion. For 
elementary schools, founded by religious societies but 
enjoying state aid, now known as " non-provided " schools, 
it is prescribed (i) that no religious test shall be required 
of any pupil, (2) that religious instruction shall be given 
at such an hour that parents who choose to do so may 
withdraw their children without forfeiting any of the other 
benefits of the school, and (3) that this instruction shall 
not be subject to inspection by his majesty's inspectors. 
In schools founded by the state, now known as "provided" 
schools, the question of religious instruction is left with 
the local school authority, with the reservations that it 
shall not be denominational, and that it may be possible 
for parents to withdraw their children from it as in case of 
the non-provided schools. 

In accordance with this prescription, and under the stimu- 
lus of church influences, almost all provided schools have 
Scripture lessons. The London Board enacted that " the 
Bible shall be read, and there shall be given such expla- 
nations and such instruction therefrom in the principles of 
morality and religion as are suited to the capacities of the 
children." The same board issued annually a syllabus of 
Bible instruction for the use of its teachers. This arrange- 
ment survives the dissolution of the London Board and the 
transference of its duties to the County Council. 

At the present time the provided schools and the non- 
provided schools enroll almost equal numbers of pupils. 
The subject-matter of religious teaching is much the same 

183 



MORAL TRAINING 

in both, except that non-provided schools require the cate- 
chism, church dogmas, and other denominational features. 
With this distinction in mind it will suffice to present only 
the religious teaching of the provided schools. Most that 
will be said is based on the London plan, which has been 
widely adopted. 

It is almost a universal custom to open the school with a 
hymn and prayer, either the Lord's Prayer or one or more 
short prayers from the Book of Common Prayer. The Scrip- 
ture lessons are given immediately after the opening of the 
morning session, and occupy about a half hour. ''Teachers 
are instructed to make the lessons as practical as possible, 
and not to give attention to unnecessary details." 

Examinations are held at regular intervals and reviews 
are frequent. Numerous prizes, provided by private indi- 
viduals, are distributed annually among those pupils mak- 
ing the best showing in the examinations. 

All lessons are based on the syllabus furnished by the 
local educational authority. The syllabus provides a differ- 
ent programme for each of the seven standards or classes, 
but each standard reviews much that has been learned in 
the earlier standards. The Lord's Prayer, the Ten Com- 
mandments, Proverbs, many of the Psalms, and selections 
from the Gospels and the Prophets are committed to 
memory. The child is made familiar with the lives of Old- 
Testament heroes, "with the practical lessons therefrom, 
together with the teaching of the law of Moses with refer- 
ence to the poor, the stranger, the fatherless, the widow, 
parents, and children." The life and teachings of Christ 
are studied with care, special attention being given to the 
parables of the sower, the lost sheep, the laborers in the 

184 



IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS 

vineyard, the talents, the good Samaritan, the lost piece 
of money, the prodigal son, the Pharisee and the publican. 
The learning of texts illustrating the duties of truthfulness 
and temperance is emphasized. 

It is obvious that the syllabus was arranged with special 
emphasis on the moral teachings of the Bible. Nearly all 
of the most objectionable part of the religious instruction 
of the German schools is omitted. It is also arranged with 
considerable regard for the age of the child, the simpler 
stories and easier selections coming first. 

As to the manner in which these Scripture lessons are 
taught, it may be said (i) that a reverent spirit is gener- 
ally manifest in both teacher and pupils, and (2) that the 
Scripture lessons are taught with as great care and thor- 
oughness as any other lessons. The instruction appears 
to be less devotional in provided than in non-provided 
schools, and more thorough as far as historical facts of 
the Bible are concerned. This is the natural result of the 
fact that teachers in the former are better trained than 
those in the latter. 

An official report of inspection of religious teaching in 
provided schools states that '* the fatherhood of God and 
the brotherhood of man are the keynotes of it. So far as 
examination can test it, the upshot of the lessons may be 
said to be the acquisition of a very fair knowledge of the 
Bible story, and the committal to memory, and perhaps to 
heart, of a considerable amount of the Bible text." 

Prominent among the indirect influences for moral train- 
ing in English schools, as in all schools, is the teacher's 
preparation. Teachers in secondary schools are almost en- 
tirely without professional training. Of elementary teachers 

185 



MORAL TRAINING 

only about twenty-five per cent have had a two-year normal- 
school course, — which is more largely secondary than pro- 
fessional. Almost as large a per cent are pupil teachers, 
— young apprentices of from fifteen to eighteen years of 
age. England ranks with America rather than with Ger- 
many or France in teacher training. 

The predominance of female teachers is also a marked 
feature of English elementary schools, less than twenty- 
five per cent being men, according to the census of 1902. 

The organization and management of English schools 
are comparatively free from the influence of militarism and 
the extreme centralization so noticeable on the continent. 
The teacher enjoys a good degree of freedom, and is able 
to arrange his work with some reference to his individual- 
ity and the needs of the local community. He is more a 
partner, and less a servant, of the government in its edu- 
cational work than is the French or German teacher. A 
school atmosphere is thus created which stimulates a feel- 
ing of responsibility and initiative in the pupils. Punish- 
ments are sometimes severe, but order and obedience are 
not of a military, mechanical character. The relations be- 
tween teacher and pupil are more intimate than on the 
continent, though less so than in America. 

Games, play, and athletic contests occupy a prominent 
place in the lives of English school children. The spirit of 
the Eton playing fields is invading the elementary schools. 
Teachers generally are in sympathy with school games, 
and frequently take part, believing that "a vigorous use 
of the play hours is of primal importance in developing 
manhood." '* Germans who visit English schools have 
often said they would like to transfer to German schools 

186 



IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS 

the force and enthusiasm of the EngHsh student in out-of- 
door sports, his self-reUance, and the relations of the teach- 
ers and pupils." 

Many teachers in cities and towns where there are 
library facilities seek to direct the home reading of their 
pupils along lines that are helpful to character. 

Turning our attention to the secondary schools, we find 
that Eton, Rugby, Harrow, Winchester, and similar insti- 
tutions have most fully recognized the culture value of 
games. Outdoor sports are graded and made a regular 
part of the curriculum. Boys are excused from them only 
on medical advice. Any absence from the field is treated 
as an absence from the class room. Masters not only 
direct the games but often join in them. On the average, 
nearly two hours each afternoon are devoted to sports. 

Mr. Paton, high master of Manchester Grammar School, 
after discussing the physical advantages of these public- 
school games, speaks of their moral value as follows : 

But there are other effects, less obvious and less conscious, but 
more important and quite as real. Indirectly, but none the less 
effectively, games develop promptness of action and promptness of 
decision, prompt command on the part of the captain, prompt obedi- 
ence on the part of the team. They teach self-restraint, how to keep 
one's temper under trying circumstances, and respect for an adver- 
sary even in the hottest conflict. They teach straightforwardness 
and a sense of honor, rudimentary but real. They teach unselfish- 
ness, and what English people specially lack, — the habit of cooper- 
ating with each other. And they teach all this in the Hne of the boy's 
own natural taste and natural activities. His native combativeness, 
which if neglected would make him a hooligan, and if repressed 
makes him a coward, is thus utilized to make him a man. 

The curriculum of most English secondary schools is 

extremely classical, cultivating conservatism, respect for 

187 



MORAL TRAINING 

authority, imitation of the ancient, — in a word the spirit of 
scholasticism. The " pubHc school " devotes twice as much 
time to Greek and Latin as does the German gymnasium 
or the French lyc^e. Science — which stands for individ- 
ual observation, independence, self-reliance, self-expression 
— has hardly begun to find a place. The classical influence 
is, however, offset by that of the playing field. 

A limited degree of cooperative discipline prevails, plac- 
ing considerable responsibility for good order on " sixth- 
form " boys and granting them special privileges in return. 

Cramming for university, professional, joint board, and 
other examinations is a distinctive feature of the secondary 
school. Each school is judged by the success of its candi- 
dates in competitive examinations ; therefore every boy who 
shows special ability is crammed to the limit of his capacity, 
at the expense of his fellow-students and of his own highest 
interests. A member of the Moseley Commission speaks 
of the cramming system as one of the most serious difficul- 
ties which English secondary schools have to face. 

We have now reviewed briefly the principal forces which 
make for character in the school systems of four great 
nations. 

We have found in America teachers, on the whole, poorly 
trained, three fourths of them women, giving moral instruc- 
tion only incidentally and relying chiefly on the indirect 
means of school life for moral training. We have found in 
Germany the best-trained body of teachers in the world, 
nearly all men, giving dogmatic religious instruction of the 
type common three centuries ago, and managing their 
schools with almost military exactness and rigor. We have 

1 88 



IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS 

found in France teachers second in training only to those 
of Germany, about equally divided as to sex, giving moral 
lessons prescribed and carefully outlined by the state, and 
conducting their schools largely in accordance with the 
directions of the Minister of Education at Paris. We 
have found in England teachers trained, and divided as 
to sex, much the same as in America, giving in half the 
elementary schools sectarian and in half non-sectarian reli- 
gious instruction, enjoying a considerable degree of freedom 
in the management of their schools, and relying to some 
extent on indirect means for moral training. 

Here is diversity indeed. In all this diversity, however, 
a few things have stood out clearly, compelhng attention. 

The personality of the teacher has forced itself persist- 
ently to the front throughout this study as the ultimate 
source of power in the school. This force alone gives 
vitality to the sectarian religious teaching of the German 
school, and to the non-religious moral instruction of the 
French school. The same force puts life into the English 
non-sectarian Scripture lessons, and into the incidental 
moral and religious teachings of the American school. 

The personality of the teacher is also the vital factor in 
most of the indirect moral influences of the school. Much 
emphasis is often placed on the moral value of school sub- 
jects, especially history, literature, nature study, manual 
training, and the like, and there can be no question that 
these are rich in moral-culture material ; but their signifi- 
cance for character depends chiefly on the teacher. We 
hear it said sometimes that the public opinion of the pupils 
has far more influence on character than anything the 
teacher may say. The statement contains a profound 

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MORAL TRAINING 

truth ; public opinion, in the school or out of it, has 
immense weight in determining the ideals and conduct of 
the individual. But public opinion in the school is, or ought 
to be, in great measure, the teacher's opinion — the expres- 
sion of his personality — crystallized in the minds of his 
pupils. We hear much of the importance of the moral 
atmosphere of the school, and this is tremendously impor- 
tant. The child should literally breathe a moral atmos- 
phere at home and at school if he is to attain the best 
moral character. It may be added that he must not be 
more conscious of this atmosphere than he is of the natu- 
ral atmosphere which carries life-giving oxygen to every 
fiber of his body. But the moral atmosphere of the school 
is essentially its routine and discipline permeated by the 
teacher's personality. 

If one ask why the personality of the teacher is the vital 
factor in the moral training of the school, we can do no 
better than answer in the words of Professor Coe, and in 
the spirit of Pestalozzi, "The essential method of educa- 
tion is the sharing of life." 

The practical bearing of this is seen in the training, 
selection, and retention of teachers. Concerning their 
training more will be said later. As to the selection and 
retention of teachers, it must be confessed that if only 
ideal teachers were employed most of our schools would 
be teacherless. On the other hand, it is one of the saddest 
facts of educational management that the moral personal- 
ity of a candidate for an educational position frequently 
counts for less than the amount of influence which he 
is able to bring to bear on the board. Moreover, it is often 
the case that teachers, principals, or superintendents are 

190 



IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS 

retained long after it is known that their moral influence 
over their pupils is bad. A prominent American educa- 
tional writer has well said, '' School boards that fail to 
inquire minutely into the past conduct, character, and 
moral reputation of a candidate for an educational position 
— superintendent, principal, or teacher — are guilty of 
criminal neglect." He might have added that they are 
far more guilty when they retain a teacher whose moral 
influence has become persistently bad. 

Our study also serves to show that the genetic point of 
view is fundamental in efficient moral training. Attention 
must be given to the different stages of child development. 

The religious instruction of the German schools and the 
moral instruction of the French schools were planned with 
adult life in view, not to meet the needs and conditions of 
child life. True, in the German Bible stories, in many of 
the French text-book lessons on morals, in much of the 
English and American incidental teaching of morals and 
religion, simple language is used in order that the ideas 
conveyed may be grasped by the child mind ; but it is not 
considered whether these ideas are suited to the child's 
stage of moral development. The rigorous discipline of 
the military type, less common in America than in any of 
the other countries but still far from extinct here, is based 
on the theological conception of total depravity instead of 
on a scientific study of the child's moral nature. 

The genetic point of view is significant for moral train- 
ing, in the first place, because it seeks to relate all of the 
regular work of the school to the life of the child. It seeks 
to determine the spontaneous interests at each stage of 
child development and to correlate school work with these 

191 



MORAL TRAINING 

interests. The recent overhauling of school curricula, with 
extensive revision and enrichment, is a step in this direction. 

But the genetic point of view is significant for moral 
training in more direct ways. It brings out with greater 
clearness the importance of suggestion and imitation in 
child training, revealing the variations of these to be 
adopted with advancing age. It shows that every pupil is 
constantly learning by suggestion, whether the teacher 
would have it so or not. It intensifies and gives a scien- 
tific basis to the emphasis placed on individual differences 
in children, — differences in physical health, which often 
mean much for the intellectual and moral life ; initial 
differences in temperament, emotional range, mental and 
moral initiative, sympathy, tact, etc. ; differences in home 
training before entering school, and in the entire out-of- 
school environment. It shows that the child's standards 
of morality differ from those of the adult. It furnishes 
information concerning the development of the moral 
nature, — sense of law, sense of truth, attitude toward au- 
thority, conscience, selfishness, self-sacrifice, moral ideals, 
etc. To be sure, comparatively little has yet been done in 
the study of the moral development of the child, but this 
little suffices, notwithstanding individual differences, to 
show that the field is rich in suggestions for moral training. 

It is not enough, however, that the teacher should profit 
by the results of others inspired by this point of view. The 
most important advantage of the genetic point of view is 
its effect upon the teacher himself, once he really gets it. 
He looks upon the same school equipment, the same daily 
routine, the same boys and girls as before, but his attitude 
toward them is as different as was the astronomer's attitude 

192 



IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS 

toward the heavens when he passed from the geocentric to 
the hehocentric conception of the solar system. No longer 
abihty to pass examinations, nor discipline, nor athletic 
standing, but the child himself is the central object of 
the school. The full meaning of the obvious principle, '' The 
child is not made for the school but the school for the 
child," is recognized. 

Again, our study emphasizes the immense number of 
means available for moral training. 

The advocate of a particular means, such as direct moral 
instruction, usually overlooks or underestimates the many 
other forces of the school which make for character. This 
was a fault of the frame rs of the French course of study. 
Judging by their statements, they expected moral instruc- 
tion to be the panacea for the moral ills of French life. 
But the differences in individual children, and in the same 
children at different times, make necessary many ways of 
approach, and demand that all be kept open. 

The organization of the school throws open to the alert 
teacher a great number and variety of such ways of 
approach. Moral instruction — including the use of prov- 
erbs, mottoes, injunctions, exhortations, and precepts — 
has a place in the school, and perhaps no school is entirely 
without it. But it does not follow that such instruction 
should be given at stated times as fixed lessons, and least 
of all from text-books. A brief word now and then called 
out by some incident of school life and earnestly uttered 
is worth more than a score of ordinary text-book lessons. 
Moral instruction has value according to its opportuneness 
and the tact, sincerity, and moral earnestness of the 
teacher. It must be sympathetic, individual, related to 

193 



MORAL TRAINING 

experience, and based on an intimate knowledge of the one 
instructed. " The inculcation of moral rules," says Profes- 
sor Dewey, "is no more likely to make character than is 
that of astronomical formulae." Professor Roark tells of a 
high-school boy who, on being expelled from school, 
exclaimed, " I got fired, but I got 98 per cent in ethics." 

In the lower grades, stories and fables, in the higher, 
reading lessons, history, and literature, furnish rich stores 
for cultivating the moral judgment and for fostering high 
ideals. But the teacher must, for the most part, allow the 
moral of the lesson to find its own way into the lives of his 
pupils. He may, however, see to it, particularly in the 
lower grades, that it is suited to his pupils' needs, just as a 
gardener surrounds the roots of a plant with soil rich in 
those elements which the plant can incorporate into its life. 

Among other school subjects, manual training, nature 
study, and school gardens are most important for moral 
training. An eminent educator has said : " The chief 
value of nature study in character building is that, hke life 
itself, it deals with reahties. Nature study, if it be gen- 
uine, is essentially doing. This is the basis of its effective- 
ness as a moral agent." The same may be said of manual 
training and of school gardening. All three of these sub- 
jects serve to furnish the pupil with pleasant occupation 
for leisure moments out of school, and thus to remove him 
from the bane of idleness. They teach respect for prop- 
erty rights. A lad of fourteen, in the Lyman School for 
delinquent boys on the charge of theft, said to the princi- 
pal one day : ''Mr. P , I 've learned not to steal. Some 

fellow stole my finest muskmelons, and I know now how it 
feels." Patience is inculcated by these studies, since the 

194 



IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS 

pupil must wait for results till his labor, or that of nature, 
is completed. In so far as they contribute to muscle and 
nerve, they help to build the foundation of positive moral 
character. It is noteworthy that experience has shown 
manual training and gardening to be two of the most potent 
forces for reclaiming delinquent boys. 

We have seen that games and play may be very impor- 
tant factors in developing self-control, initiative, coopera- 
tion, respect for the rights of others, loyalty to the social 
group. They are also of great value to the observing 
teacher in revealing the characters, temperaments, and 
dispositions of his pupils. 

It has already been intimated that physical training is 
significant for character. Herbart said long ago : '' Sickly 
natures feel themselves dependent ; robust ones dare to 
will. Therefore the care of health is essentially a part of 
the formation of character." Evolutionally the develop- 
ment of the human muscular system leads that of the 
intellectual and moral life. Recent studies, notable among 
them Mr. Puffer's study of the physical, social, intellec- 
tual, and moral qualities of a hundred delinquent boys, 
show a close relation between perfect physical develop- 
ment and positive morality. In boys' camps and summer 
schools this is recognized. Dr. Talbot, at his boys' camp 
at Lake Asquam, New Hampshire, produces almost mar- 
velous improvement in the mental and moral lives of 
stupid, backward boys by simply giving them an abun- 
dance of sleep and outdoor exercise. Physical training 
suited to the needs of the individual pupil will some day 
be generally recognized as one of the first essentials to 
character building. 

195 



MORAL TRAINING 

Even the arrangements of the building as to Hght, heat, 
ventilation, and sanitation contribute to or detract from 
the general orderliness of the school. Every teacher knows 
that many a case of discipline, with far-reaching conse- 
quences, has arisen from poor ventilation, and many 
another from narrow halls. 

Discipline and management are immensely rich in possi- 
bihties for character building. The aim, however, must 
not be merely good order and absence of friction, but 
the development of moral selfhood through cooperation. 
" Breaking the will" has no place. in the school. Military 
discipline may "hold down" even vigorous, healthy boys, 
but it utterly fails to build up character. The child should 
early be made to feel a copartnership in and a responsi- 
bihty for the government of the school. This is done 
admirably in a well-managed "school city," and may also 
be done equally well without such elaborate machinery. 

Self-emulation, encouraged by comparison of the pupil's 
work of one month or year with his own work of an earlier 
date, such as is possible in French schools by means of the 
cahicr^ may well supersede much of the vicious competition 
promoted by examinations and prizes. Colonel Parker never 
tired of condemning '* the systematic cultivation of selfish- 
ness by bribery, — per cents, material rewards, and prizes." 

The routine of a well-managed school, as Dr. Harris has 
so ably pointed out, cultivates habits of punctuality, regu- 
larity, and system, — marks of character often too Httle 
recognized. 

Pupil organizations, such as clubs, Legions of Honor, and 
the like in the upper grades, and in the high schools literary 
and debating societies, athletic associations, fraternities, 

196 



IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS 

and musical clubs, — particularly if spontaneous organiza- 
tions, — are important moral factors in the school life. 

Even the school janitor is a moral factor of no little con- 
sequence ; his character and reputation, his attitude toward 
the pupils, as well as the thoroughness with which he does 
his work, are legitimate and necessary subjects of inquiry 
on the part of the board employing him. 

It is vital that there be such an assignment of school 
work that every pupil, not merely the brightest, nor yet 
all but the dullest, but all^ may be conscious of progress, 
may feel the satisfaction, the power, and the will for fur- 
ther effort which come only from doing, from overcoming 
obstacles. It is the glory of manual training and nature 
study that they consist essentially in doing. They furnish 
to many a pupil who would otherwise seldom experience 
it, the consciousness of progress. 

Enough has been said to indicate the great number and 
variety of means afforded by the school for moral training, 
though the catalogue is by no means complete. It needs 
to be added that all forces must harmonize, must work 
together, not only for character, but for the same kind of 
character, — and that, democratic manhood, — if the best 
results are to be realized. It has been seen that a chief 
fault of French moral education is that the organization 
and management of the school repress the type of charac- 
ter which instruction seeks to develop. Many an American 
teacher encourages moral selfhood by every means save 
the essential one, — giving his pupils an opportunity to 
practice it. Many another urges his pupils to honesty and 
truthfulness, and then encourages their opposites by watch- 
ing for them. 

197 



MORAL TRAINING 

Our study leads also to the conclusion that the school 
can do much more for the moral training of its pupils in 
their out-of-school lives. "The end of the school is its 
effects upon the home," writes a Swedish educator. Hen- 
derson says, " The pedagogy of the future will concern 
itself far more with the child out of school than with the 
child in the school." 

Sociologists lament the decline of the home, owing to 
changing industrial and economic conditions. It is unques- 
tionably true that the average home occupies a far less 
prominent place in the life of the child to-day than it did 
a generation ago. The social environment has become a 
more powerful factor. The home, whether wisely or not, 
has delegated a larger share of its responsibility to the 
school. The school has been obliged to concern itself 
more and more with the health, the nourishment, the 
environment, and the activities of its pupils during the 
many hours of the day when it does not have direct super- 
vision over them. 

The means for making the school more effective in the 
home lives of its pupils are chiefly two. One of these is 
mothers' meetings. These are held in the schools of many 
of our cities. They are specially valuable in the poor and 
foreign sections, since they bring the school and home 
into mutual sympathy, teach the mothers how to care for 
the physical and moral needs of their children, and implant 
in the homes some of the school's ideals. 

The second and by all odds the most important means 
of influencing the out-of-school lives of pupils is the sheer 
momentum of school activity. The school can, and fre- 
quently does, start in its brief five hours of the day activities 

198 



IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS 

possessing such inherent force that they mnst work them- 
selves out in the child's leisure and recreation. Only such 
activities as appeal strongly to the pupil and connect 
readily with home interests can ever acquire this momen- 
tum. Manual training, nature study, and school gardens 
possess these quahties in a marked degree, though the 
opportunities for their practical application in and around 
the home are often pitiably meager. Only a few days ago 
a little fellow accosted me on the street with, *' Say, mister, 
do you know birds 1 " He then gave a description of a 
new bird he had just seen, and wanted to know its name. 
Nature study had given that boy something to think about 
when out of school. 

Games, also, may be taught, as they are in some of the 
schools of New York City, expressly for the purpose of 
providing the children with suitable recreation when away 
from the school. Teachers in the higher grades are begin- 
ning to make serious efforts to influence the home reading 
of their pupils and to give them permanent interests in 
good reading. Rapid increase in public-library facilities 
has made this an important, though extremely difficult, 
problem. A grammar-school principal told me recently 
that, after several years of carefully directed efforts by 
herself and her teachers to influence the home reading of 
her pupils, she found by actual investigation that almost 
nothing had been accomplished. 

Finally, this study forces one to the conclusion that 
special preparation of teachers for their work of moral 
training in the school is the first and chief prerequisite of 
increased efficiency. *' School reform is always school- 
master reform." 

199 



MORAL TRAINING 

When all has been said, the fact remains that the moral 
training of the school to-day is haphazard, unsystematic, 
unscientific. Part of it is directed in a chaotic sort of way 
by the teacher, whose methods are chiefly the result of 
accident. The greater part is left to chance ; it may be 
good, it may be bad ; it may be in harmony with that 
directed by the teacher, and it may not. And yet practi- 
cally all educators are agreed that the fundamental aim of 
education is character. 

Teachers' training schools are doing little to improve 
the situation. True, the German teacher is specially 
trained for his religious teaching ; it is true also that the 
French teacher devotes considerable time in the normal 
school to preparation for teaching la morale ; and many, 
though by no means a majority of English teachers are 
prepared to some extent for teaching Scripture lessons. 
Moreover, nearly all of the teachers of Germany and 
France, and an increasing percentage of those of England 
and America, have a general pedagogical training. These 
facts must not be overlooked. It has already been pointed 
out how general pedagogical training of teachers is related 
to the moral influences of the school. Few will question 
that any country does wisely in demanding special training 
in religion and morals of the teachers of these subjects. 

However, neither general professional training as it is 
given to-day, nor such special training as that given by the 
German, French, or English normal schools, is sufficient. 
The former gives almost no attention to moral training, 
either direct or indirect. The latter concerns itself only 
with direct instruction, and seeks to give a comprehensive 
knowledge of what is to be taught rather than of the best 

200 



IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS 

methods of teaching it. Either separately or together they 
fail to give a teacher anything like adequate preparation 
for the great task of moral training in the school. 

But how shall such preparation be given, and what shall 
be its nature .? It should be given in every normal school 
as a separate subject, and by an expert. It should also be 
made a regular part of the work of teachers' institutes, 
and of the training given to teachers already employed in 
city systems. It should become the heart of all profes- 
sional training of teachers. 

The direction which special preparation of teachers for 
moral training should take has been intimated in the pre- 
ceding paragraphs. Much attention should be given to 
the place of the teacher's personality. Child study should 
be pursued with special reference to the development of 
spontaneous interests and of the moral nature, and also 
to individual differences. The teacher must acquire the 
genetic point of view which recognizes the child as the 
center of the school's Hfe and effort. He should be led to 
appreciate the physiological basis of character. He should 
consider the place of the school in moral training, in rela- 
tion to the home, the church, and the social environment of 
out -of -school life, — this in order that in actual teaching he 
may be led to study the moral environment of his school 
and of his individual pupils. He should be made familiar 
with the great variety of means which the ordinary school 
affords for moral training, both within the school and out- 
side of it, giving attention to the possible contribution of 
each and to their relative values. He should be led to 
recognize the necessity of harmonizing all of the moral 
forces at work in the school. Special methods of moral 



MORAL TRAINING 

training made use of in particular schools such as Abbots- 
holme, the Ethical Culture School of New York City, the 
Elmira Reformatory, etc., should be studied carefully. 
The practice school should be utilized for illustrative and 
experimental purposes. All this should be additional to a 
general pedagogical training, or better, should be an essen- 
tial part of it. 

Thus equipped, the teacher in his class room and the 
principal in his building — each having been selected only 
after his personal character has been carefully investigated 
— should be given absolute freedom to work out his own 
method of moral training and his own plan of organization 
and management. Both may be given suggestions by 
higher authority, but neither should be required to main- 
tain a certain kind of discipline or organization, or to teach 
a given course, or in fact any course, in religion or morals. 
Nor should they be forbidden to teach either, so long as 
they avoid offense to the consciences and religious beliefs 
of pupils and parents. Moral personality is the most 
precious possession of any teacher; let him share it with 
his pupils in whatever way he finds best, so long as he 
offends none. 

Such is the plan proposed on the basis of this compara- 
tive study -for making moral training in our public schools 
more efficient. It will not make the school a perfect insti- 
tution for moral training — the millennium is not yet due. 
It probably will not implant, though it will intensify, moral 
earnestness in the teacher. But it will give unity, definite- 
ness, and system to the teacher's most important work, — 
a work now left largely to chance. It will tend to do for 

202 



IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS 

moral training what modern pedagogy is trying to do too 

exclusively for physical and intellectual training, — give it 

a scientific basis. George E. Myers 

Principal McKinley Manual 

Training High School 

Washington, D.C. 



203 



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